INTERVIEW WITH LEE DEMARBRE

Director Lee Demarbre’s films are infused with a passion for B movie genres: Hong Kong action flicks, horror movies, musicals, Blaxpoitation films and Mexican wrestling films, to name a few. A 16mm short – Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy – launched his career in 1999, garnering a Slamdance film festival award. Demarbre followed up with a string of genre-bending films, from the low-budget 16mm cult film Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) to the big-budget horror film Smash Cut (2009).

Anita Malhotra spoke with Demarbre on April 19, 2011 at Ottawa’s Mayfair Theatre, where he is co-owner and programmer.

Lee Demarbre in his office at Ottawa's Mayfair Theatre after his Artsmania interview

AM: When did you start making films?

LD:   When I was very young, when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, that was the first film that made me think, “This is something maybe I can do when I grow up.” It wasn’t the movie itself, it was the poster, because the poster said, “From the makers of Jaws and Star Wars.” The poster made me think, “Oh, that’s a profession. The guy who made Star Wars and the guy who made Jaws are teaming up to make Raiders. That’s gonna be a good movie.” And I learned about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and starting buying books and reading them at a very young age.

INTERVIEW WITH HARRI STOJKA

One of Austria’s best-known jazz musicians, guitarist Harri Stojka began performing in 1970 and has since released more than 15 LPs and CDs. Playing in Viennese rock bands as a young teen, he formed his own jazz-rock band at 17, and at 24 was invited to play at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. Equally at home playing rock, punk, funk and jazz guitar, Stojka, a Vienna-born Roma, now specializes in the music closest to his heart: gypsy jazz.

Anita Malhotra spoke with Stojka in his dressing room after a concert sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum on Feb. 18, 2011 at Ottawa’s Arts Court.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SHOWMAN

Classically trained fiddle-player John Showman is the co-founder of two thriving and stylistically contrasting Toronto-based bands – the Foggy Hogtown Boys (bluegrass) and the Creaking Tree String Quartet, whose latest CD, a hybrid of roots, bluegrass, jazz and classical music, has been nominated for two 2011 Juno Awards. More recently, he founded the indie-country band New Country Rehab, which released its first CD in January.

Anita Malhotra spoke to Showman, who was at his Toronto home, by telephone on Tuesday, February 8, 2011.

John Showman at the Sixth Gallery in Toronto (photo by David Leyes)

AM: How did you get started on the violin?

Showman: I started playing when I was six. It’s hard to remember why I chose violin but I remember my grandfather taught himself to play Canadian fiddle tunes, so I must have had a consciousness of that. I didn’t really get to know his playing until I started playing myself, but I remember picking up a violin in Grade 1 music class. I picked it up, started playing it, got lessons right away, and never looked back.

INTERVIEW WITH SANDRA SCHULBERG

Sandra Schulberg is a New York-based producer whose credits include Waiting for the Moon (Sundance Grand Jury Prize, 1987) and the Oscar-nominated Quills. Her most recent project, Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, was shown at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival and is now making its away across North American theatres and film festivals. It’s a frame-by-frame restoration of a 1948 film made by her father, Stuart Schulberg, about the first Nuremberg Trial. The original film was shown in Germany as part of a postwar campaign to “denazify” and re-educate Germans, but was never shown in U.S. theatres.

 

Anita Malhotra spoke to Schulberg, who was at her New York office, by telephone on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011.

INTERVIEW WITH BHAT BOY

Bhat Boy is an Ottawa-based artist whose fantastical cityscapes and other works can currently be seen at two Ottawa galleries as well as on a briskly selling jigsaw puzzle recently released by the German company Ravensburger. Anita Malhotra interviewed Bhat Boy at his home in the Glebe – a neighbourhood he paints often – as he prepared for a hectic day of gallery appearances.

"Bhat" Boy on Dec. 11, 2010 at his exhibit at the Snapdragon Gallery

AM: On your website you mention that you are the son of a cleaning lady and a spy.

BB:  Well, it’s true. But my mom worked at Nortel at first. Everyone in the family worked at Nortel at one point – Nortel actually sponsored our family to come to Canada from England. But she got laid off later on and she went into being a cleaning lady because she found that it was much less stressful.

As for my dad being a spy, it wasn’t until after the Iron Curtain came down and my father retired that I began to realize what my father did. It’s funny, I never knew what my Dad did when I grew up. He just worked for the government. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that he was a “Q” type, if you put it in a James Bond scenario, because he worked in the development of spy technology.

INTERVIEW WITH MAX MIDDLE

Max Middle is the pen name of Mark Robertson, an Ottawa-based poet and founder of The A B Series, a poetry reading series that features experimental, sound and performance poetry from Canada and around the world. Anita Malhotra interviewed Max on Friday, Nov. 12, 2010 at Chez Lucien, a bustling pub in Ottawa’s Byward Market.

Max Middle interviewed at Chez Lucien

AM: Before you actually got into writing poetry, did you have an interest in sound? Were you particularly aware of your sound environment?

MAX: I’m not active with music at the moment but have a background in it, specifically keyboards, percussion and drums. I guess I started playing percussion in the school band in Grade 7 and playing drum set, and later on playing drums in rock bands. So yes, that’s an obvious area for the merging of sound and poetry. You’ve got percussion and poetry, where do those two things meet? Because you can make percussive sounds with your voice, and those sounds could be considered either musical in nature or they could be considered literary in nature, depending on how you present them.

About Artsmania

Artsmania is produced by Anita Malhotra, an Ottawa-based freelance writer with a background in music and film who loves the arts and enjoys sharing her discoveries with a broader audience. Anita can be contacted at artsmania99@hotmail.com or anitapmalhotra@hotmail.com.