October 21, 2008 Fringe Arts

Of national borders and human boundaries

Photographer Larry Towell is the subject of Territories, a new doc by a Concordia prof

by Christopher Olson

“It’s an interest I’ve always had, of migration, our barriers, our walls.” Photographer Larry Towell finds the essence of the human condition in war-torn Palestine.

Throughout his life, Ontario photographer Larry Towell has had a penchant for showing up in the wrong place at the right time, which explains how he ended up in New York City only a few blocks away from the World Trade Towers on the morning of 9/11. But Towell denies he’s drawn to images of war and carnage: it’s all just part of the human condition, and the humanism that is the centrepiece of his work. Montreal documentary filmmaker Mary Ellen Davis is a part-time teacher at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, whose film about Larry Towell, entitled Territories, will screen at Cinema Politica next Monday.

Having met Towell while on separate filming assignments in Guatemala back in 1989, Davis followed him all the way to the Gaza strip to shoot Territories, a film about the walls and fences that serve to divide communities and inflate historic rivalries. From his inimitable and intimate family portraits to photographing world conflicts, Towell prefers to think that he’s documenting the conflict between “families,” and not ideologies. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict “has nothing to do with religion,” declares Towell. “It has to do with real estate. This is a real estate war, and all the other stuff is ammunition.”

While his new book of photography, The View from my Front Porch, was shot entirely on his family ranch in Ontario, Towell manages to bring his own views to whatever subject he takes on. His opinion is that photographers should embrace poetic license and not attempt a futile effort to appear “objective,” may be why funding for the film proved so difficult to attain, says Davis.

From the very beginning, Davis decided that the film would take a “passionate perspective on the issues.”

Then again, even CNN has a bias, she points out. While visiting the US-Mexican border fence in the film, Towell confronts a group of CNN cameramen. “Why do you have to use so many lights?” asks Towell. “Got to make them look pretty,” answers one of the technicians. There’s nothing pretty about the wall, argues Towell, and there’s nothing “fair and balanced” about the news coverage of it, either. “We’re trying to show you what you don’t see in the mainstream press,” says Davis. “When we do our films we’re concerned only with our own vision. It’s our vision of the world we’re presenting.”

Davis is already planning her next documentary, which will also centre on a close personal friend of the filmmaker. “I’ll be ready to start filming once my students have completed their films,” says Davis, who invited her class to the screening, but claims it won’t show up on the midterm.

Territories will be screened along with Gerd Schneider’s The Edge of Hope on Monday, Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m., Room H-110, 1455 de Maisonneuve. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mary Ellen Davis, who will be in attendance.