Mark Lewis rear projects at the Cinematheque Ontario

BACKSTORY (USA 2009) 39 min
Director: Mark Lewis

CINEMA MUSEUM (USA 2008) 36 min
Director: Mark Lewis

These two short documentaries are much more than an amplification of Mark Lewis’s lauded artwork, although they directly relate to the film installations that took this year’s Venice Biennale by storm. 

They fuse his curiosity around historical filmmaking techniques with a carefully aestheticized approach to cinema as both a fan-based and industrialized cultural phenomenon. Backstory introduces us to the remaining stars of rear projection, a technique in which a second unit crew films a scene’s actual location, like an Alpine slope, then projects their footage in the studio as a backdrop to actors’ performances. The result is both narratively effective and obviously artificial, ideal fodder for an artist intrigued by modernism’s contradictions. Lewis interviews the rugged, techie makers of these “plates” with some of the finest work from their archives as backdrops. The effect is uniquely beautiful; the faded, soundless images from a Hollywood past create a Zen-like elegy for the ageing figures, as they recall the key moments of their profession and an unsung art form unto itself. Cinema Museum may indicate another path, or perhaps just a fascinating detour, for Lewis’s cinema experiments. His camera follows, in a Kubrick-like tracking shot, the eccentric owner of a private museum of cinema ephemera in South London. As the deliberate camera finds labels and objects of interest, though, it pauses, reflects (on, say “Gulag Guns”), seemingly digests information for future use and moves on. One can feel the fertile mind of Lewis at work, mining cinema’s history for nuggets to include in contemporary art’s newest masterworks.

Although now entirely replaced by green screens, CGI and other computer-based technologies, rear projection gets a well-deserved spotlight from October 15 to October 20. Art superstar Mark Lewis, Canada’s representative at this year’s prestigious Venice Biennale, presents some of his favourite examples of rear projection in Hollywood cinema. Presented in conjunction with the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Mark Lewis Presents Rear Projection’s Greatest Hits includes in-person introductions by Lewis of his own acclaimed Backstory (2009), an exploration of the personalities and artistry behind rear-projection technology in Hollywood; his Cinema Museum (2008), a documentary that follows the eccentric owner of a private museum of cinema ephemera in South London;

and Alfred Hitchcock’s wartime thriller, Saboteur (1942).

Other films include Otto Preminger’s River of No Return (1954)

and Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939).