This is the big time of year for artisans and craftsmakers — where all the imagination, hard work and time they’ve poured into their unique and quality creations comes to fruit.

Spruce Meadows International Christmas Market features events for the whole family. [Photo credit: Mike Sturk Photography]

Venues around the city and surrounding townsites vie with each other to prepare unique and entertaining marketplace settings to attract visitors and shoppers. In addition to a wide variety of booths, most of them feature seasonal entertainment, catered food courts and events like visits from Santa or sleigh-rides in the snow (or hay-rides if a warm Chinook wind whisked all the snow away.) A general admission covers the cost of the venue and entertainment.

The largest of these events are not dedicated solely to local artisans and craftsmakers. Some of them are, like the ACAD student show and Bragg Creek Artisan Fair (listed below.) But the really big events mostly feature work from farther afield. So, if you’re dedicated to the 100-mile principle of supporting local economies and smaller regional businesses, you would be better off with studio tours and affiliate gallery shows. That said, the advantage the larger shows have is quantity and variety, and quite a lot of the exhibitors are Canadian, if not Calgarian.

If you like to turn your Christmas shopping into more of an adventure, though, don’t be afraid of driving off to Bragg Creek or the Leighton Centre, or taking in some student work at ACAD.

Here are some of the best on offer:

SPRUCE MEADOWS INTERNATIONAL CRAFTS MARKET at Spruce Meadows Exhibition Hall. November 18th – 20th and November 25th – 27th.

Exhibitors come from all over the world, so this is not a local craftsmakers only event by any means. That said, some local artisans and certainly, many Canadian craftsmakers do rent space for their wares, and with the economy in its present state, it’s better to support these industries.

Booths feature art, crafts, apparel and food, both for enjoying onsite or ready for gift baskets. Musicians, dancers and other entertainers perform onstage, and carol singers wander through the crowd. Ice carvings, fire pits and other entertainments are available outdoors.

General Admission costs $8.00
Seniors and children 12 and under are free.
A 6-time multipass can be purchased for $20.

8011 Spruce Meadows Way, SW (off the Marquis de Lorne Trail)
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2J 5G5

The Red Arrow Express provides free transportation from the Somerset/Bridlewood LRT station (the last stop on the southward LRT line.)

ALBERTA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN SALE OF STUDENT WORKS

ACAD’s student works range the gamut of jewellery, ceramics, glassmaking, prints, photographs and paintings. Hundreds of pieces are on offer from every department of study in ACAD.

The show runs Thursday, 24th November, from 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm;
Friday, 25th November, from 1:00 pm to 9:00 pm;
and Saturday, 26th November, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.

It gets very busy, so try to make it there early for the best selection.

There is no admission fee, and accepted forms of payment are cash, debit, Visa and Mastercard.

1407 – 14th Avenue, NW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
T2N 4R3

FESTIVAL OF CRAFTS:

The Festival of Crafts show is an exhibitors tour event. Artists and craftsmakers sign up and pay a booth rental fee to a promoter, who rents venues and buys advertisements in various different locations in Canada. As with the Spruce Meadows event, there is no indication how many of the craftsmakers are local.

It is held at the BMO Centre in Stampede Park, a huge exhibition hall, and there are hundreds of small companies, producing almost every type of craft you can dream of, signed up.
Thursday, 1st December, 2011 – Sunday, 4th December, 2011

Thursday 10:00 am – 9:30 pm
Friday 10:00 am – 9:30 pm
Saturday 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Sunday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

The BMO Centre is part of the Stampede Grounds complex, and probably one of the easiest to find venues in all of Calgary. The Victoria Park LRT station lets you off almost right at the door, but if you plan to drive, be sure to reserve some money for parking.

Admission Fees:

Adults $7
Seniors (65+) $5 Youths (13-17) $5
Free for children 12 and under unlimited free
re-admission

BRAGG CREEK ARTISAN MARKET:

The Bragg Creek Christmas Craft Sale is a wonderful excuse to drive out and enjoy the breathtaking beauty of the eastern Rockies 20 minutes south of Calgary. Bragg Creek, on the Elbow River, a beautiful village surrounded by pine forests close to the McLean Creek Recreational region of the Kananaskis. If Allan Bill pond is frozen, there is usually a skating rink cleared near the picnic tables, and Elbow Falls lose none of their beauty. Cross-country trails abound, and then, there is this wonderful craft fair to enjoy.

It runs:

Saturday, 19th to Sunday, 20th November, 2011
from 10 am to 5 pm daily at the Bragg Creek Centre,
23 White Avenue
Bragg Creek, Alberta, Canada
T0L 0K0
(Google-Earth Coordinates: 50° 56′ 59.63″ N 114° 33′ 42.61″ W)

LEIGHTON ART CENTER:

Sadly, the Leighton Art Centre near Priddis celebrated its 2012 Christmas in the Country Art Sale extra early this year, (on November 4th – 6th, and the Remembrance Day Long Weekend), but the Fall into Winter Art Exhibition and Sale continues until the 16th December, 2011. The center, itself, is in a gorgeous wooded area of the foothills just south of Calgary, and well worth the drive, if you can get out.

You may also want to take part in a wonderful one-day Beeswax Candle-Making Workshop with Mechthild Reinders, which includes a variety of candles, including chandelier tapers appropriate for a Chanukah Menorah.

Saturday, 26th November, 2011
10 am – 4 pm
$65 + GST ($70.)
Leighton Weaving Studio

Driving to the Leighton Centre is an adventure. Fortunately, they provide excellent downloadable directions on their website.

Good luck with your shopping, and may your days be merry and bright!

Calgary International Film Festival’s Presentation of
A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

Laszlo Zsolt (Gyula Udvaros) and Bea Melkvi (Mari) on the Banks of the Danube.

Hungarian and Slovenian folk dances are so intricate, it takes years of practice to acquire the necessary precision and dexterity before the dancers can proceed at the breakneck speed of a professional company. One misstep, one forgotten element of movement, one careless moment of distraction and a Rube Goldberg’s progression of disasters unspins. When everything goes perfectly, however, the dance leaves viewers breathless, pulses racing like the dancers themselves.

The Maiden Danced to Death, a labyrinthine tale of treachery, betrayal and revenge, written and directed by Endre Hules, is like one of those folk dances. Each detail has been placed so precisely within the story’s structure that revelations unfold with breathtaking élan — always fresh, startling, unpredictable and unveiled at the moment of greatest impact. It takes a wild spin across two of the most beautiful cities in the world, Budapest and Montréal.

Twenty years after Pista Udvaros, played by Endre Hules, has been exiled from communist Hungary, he returns with a purpose. From the moment he sets foot outside the arrivals terminal under overcast skies and commandeers a taxi from under the people who hailed it, his character is established. Pista means ‘crowned’ and Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography takes us with him over Budapest’s famous ironwork bridge and up the cliff face, where palaces, the great Cathedral and grand hotels show Udvaros overseeing vast tracts of the Danube and its surrounding flatlands — a man of far-reaching vision, who knows exactly what he wants and allows nothing to impede him.

A jubilant reunion takes place with Udvaros’ younger brother, Gyula, and sister-in-law and one-time lover, Mari, in their dance studio, a place which has fallen on hard times now that the communists are no longer in power. The sedate colour pallette and muted lighting reinforce a sense of hidebound tradition. Even the signature company dance, The Maiden Danced to Death, has not changed since Pista left.

Bea Melkvi (Mari) and Steve Court (Endres Hules) engaged in an elaborate chess match.

Court is a cypher. Is the elder of the two brother’s return a matter of celebration, or a warning of darker business to come? And what has happened to the family he left behind in Canada?

A phone call, to the senior Gyula Udvaros, their father — forced upon Court by his brother and faced with resignation and acceptance — results in an exchange of bitter words, as both brothers seemed to know it must. These personal relationships are political, and the end of the old regime leads to a new power balance, reflected in Hungary and the Balkans.

Ancient Fertility Rituals and Blood Sport

As the movie’s title indicates, folk dances contain symbols for the social orders of their creators, and may include or reflect darker, more barbaric practices stretching back through the past to tribal origins. Just as Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring addressed the oft-times brutal rituals of the ancient Slavs, the Honvéd Dance Company’s Eastern European folk dances also depict a similar element of blood sport.

The company’s lead female dancer must pass her ‘crown of flowers’ to a younger woman just as they are on the cusp of international success. Marriages serve up aridity and deceit, meeting vulnerability with hostility and bitter humiliation. Children are alienated from parents. A father is publicly beaten in front of his daughter in a scene which pivots so much between ossified tradition and liberty, the viewer must choose where their own sympathies lie and what the cost of those beliefs entail in very graphic terms: who is led off in chains? Who is set free?

“The Maiden Danced to Death” referred to a punitive measure taken against a young woman who offended the strict and narrow social codes of farming communities and villages. A girl, deemed too flirtatious and seductive, is culled from society by those she rejects. She is danced from young man to young man until she is spun out of their circle and ostracized, left exhausted, without protection, as good as dead.

Shortly into the film, we learn the full cost of Court’s exile, but until the climax, we never learn the identity of the ‘maiden’ in this particular dance; every principle and most of the supporting actors have their moment of public excoriation. We only know for certain that the dance unfolds irresistably before us.

When the brothers ask why girls allowed themselves to be subjected to this sport, Mari explains, “What could they do? When you’re asked to dance, you dance.”

Smoke and Mirrors

The techniques of mirrors and smokescreens which Hules uses to misdirect his viewers recall the mechanical wonders and Vaudevillian stagecraft imported from Prague, Budapest and those great Medieaval capitals. Mirroring starts in earnest as we track Court back to the mountain over Montréal. The city is less stately and more modern, but the scene stretching beneath him is almost identical to the landscape he surveyed from the cliffs over Budapest. Emergency sirens provide an omen of what he awaits, both in his marriage and the company he founded.

Much is made of pacts with the devil, an archaic trope favoured by Eastern Europe pre-dating Goethe. Binding agreements, Machiavellan negotiations, masked identities — both onstage and behind the scenes — feature throughout the film, and it seems as though the plot will unfold with the usual cost of Faustian bargain, but this underestimates Hules’ skill as a storyteller. The true role of the contract is so unexpected as to leave the viewer nonplussed.

When Court tells Mari, “I’m just a ghost,” it seems as though ruin and desolation are inevitable, but Hules’ pulls out another astonishing surprise — one which shows the vibrancy and relevance of folk dancing to our modern age, just when it seems the craft no longer reflects our modern world.

From the Calgary International Film Festival, the film now proceeds to France.

A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

A joint Hungarian, Canadian and Slovenian production written and directed by Endre Hules.

Photography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Cast :
Endre Hules: Pista Udvaros/Steve Court
Bea Melkvi: Mari Udvaros
Laszlo Zsolt: Gyula Udvaros, Jr.
Boris Cavazza: Gyula Udvaros, Sr.
Deborah Kara Unger: Lynne Court
Stephen McHattie: Ernie Hatchet

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SHOW US YOUR SHORTS FILM FESTIVAL (SUYS)
March 25 – 27, 2010

3 day passes for $12 available at Bird Dog Video:
1333 – 16 Ave. SW, Calgary, AB, T3C 0Z7
(403) 398-2283

The Show Us Your Shorts Short-Film Format Festival was launched in 2009 by a fourth-year film student at the University of Calgary after her professor suggested she volunteer at a film festival. She originally recruited classmates, Beth Sawatzky, Emma Levine, Jessica Fralick and Immanuel Nwachukwu to help out as volunteers with the Film Studies 441 class project, which investigated five international film festivals and adopted the most successful templates for jury selection and awards, marketing and legal. They also wanted to cultivate a more vibrant arts community.

The 2010 SUYS Opening Night Gala Screenings begin March 25th, 7:00 PM at The Plaza Theatre, 1133 Kensington Rd. NW, Calgary.

Famed Short Film animator, Emily Hubley’s, will premiere the Alberta debut of her feature film, The Toe Tactic [Suggested ages: 14+], presented in partnership with GIRAF (The Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival) and Quick Draw Animation Society, with music by Yo La Tengo. Hubley was the artistic director for “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”

The Toe Tactic will screen along with the 2009 Ultra Short Film Festival, which features ART BY CHANCE‘s touring show of 31 international films under 30 seconds long, introducing a new size category: x-small (less than one minute.)

Admission: $7 at the door
(3-day Festival Passes are available for $12 pre-purchased at Bird Dog Video: 1333 – 16 Ave. SW, Calgary; (403) 398-2283.)

The SUYS Festival / EMMEDIA Open House and Official Showcase continues March 26th, 2010, at EMMEDIA Gallery and Production Society Suite #203, 351 – 11 Ave. SW. (around back & upstairs.)

Start the evening’s festivities at the EMMEDIA Open House (5 – 7 PM), then proceed to the screening room for the 2nd Annual SUYS Showcase, where 14 international short films in varying sizes will be shown. This includes the North American Premiere of experimental Czech Republic short film, “…Kde Jsme? or …Where Are We?”, and internationally award winning Director and Cinematographer, Christopher Ball’s short film music video, “Watchmaker – Tom Fun Orchestra.” The programme is posted online at the Show Us Your Shorts website.

Admission: Free, although a $2 – $5 donation would be appreciated.

The SUYS 2010 – Festival Awards, Nominee Screenings & Closing Night Gala wraps up Saturday, March 27, from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM at The Plaza Theatre, 1133 Kensington Rd. NW, Calgary. (This will be a licensed event, so no minors please.)

Admission: $8 at the door

The following awards will be presented:

• Best Size X-Small, Small, Medium, Large
• Best Narrative
• Best Craft
• Most Innovative
• Audience Favourite
• Grand Jury Prize “Golden Shorts”
• The SUYS 2010 Screenwriting Competition.

The winner of this last award will have their screenplay produced for Sled Island Film 2010, as part of Sled Island Festival.

Again, the programme line-up for this event can be read at the Show Us Your Shorts Festival Website.

X-Posted to Calgary Festivals.

REEL ARTISTS FILM FESTIVAL:
Journey Through the World of Visual Art

March 25th – 28th, 2010
All films are  screened at the Stanford Perrott Lecture Hall
The Alberta College of Art and Design,
1407 – 14 Avenue, NW
Calgary, Alberta

Eleven documentary films about contemporary art and some of the strongest artists in it will be screened at the Reel Artists Film Festival this March.  The creative nonfiction presentations will showcase the talents of Colette Urban, Yoshitomo Nara, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, François Sullivan, Ernst Beyeler (an art dealer),  Takao Tanabe, Guy Maddin, Andrea  Zittel, Monika Sosnowska, Chuck Close and Antony Gormley. Eleven films will be shown over the four-day festival.

As part of the festival, the Illingworth-Kerr Gallery will host a 3-day intensive workshop, LIVE CINEMA: Real-Time Narratives with Mia Makela (SOLU), and a Scriptwriting Workshop with Noam Gonick and Joshua Wade.  Both workshops seem very detailed and comprehensive for people who are interested in filmmaking.

This festival promises to be extremely rewarding, especially given that admission is free.  Check out the program schedule at the Canadian Art Foundation or at Alberta College of Art + Design.

Cross-posted to Calgary Visual Arts and Calgary Film.

“The Festival requires a devoted force of approximately 600 volunteers to make this five-day event fun, safe and affordable. CICF is currently looking for youth volunteers, ages 14 and up, and adult volunteers to fill numerous day, evening and weekend shifts during the Festival (starting on May 24).”

Applications and a listing of available positions are accessible online at www.calgarychildfest.org or contact the CICF Volunteer Coordinator at 403-294-7414, Ext. 4 or volunteers@calgarychildfest.org.

submitted by Simone Keiran