The Search for Country: The Films of Derek May

The Search for Country: The Films ofDerek May PIERS HANDLING Derek May has made only eight films since joining the National Film Board in 1965. One of them is feature-length, two run less than ten minutes; a modest output to be sure. Yet May's films are all highly individualistic. They challenge filmic convention, no compromise is apparent in any of them, and they are all indisputably and recognizably his. The personal stamp that marks his films suggests that they were made with complete independence. Yet this apparent freedom could perhaps account for the relatively small number of films that he has made. His work has been described as difficult and self-indulgent. Critical reaction has often been hostile. His first film was quite successful; his second was greeted with a review headlined ''More National Film Board Junk. "I Every innovative artist is bound to elicit contradictory reactions to his work. Any reaction is better than no reaction at all, however, and more often than not May's films have gone unnoticed, unreviewed and, more distressingly, unseen. Yet May's films reveal a filmmaker in search of a style appropriate to his subject-matter, a style indigenous to this country and its people, attuned to their rhythms and their uncertainties, sensitive to the external and internal landscape. This style has gradually defined itself over the years. Indeed, the notion of definition is itself central to May's work, as the search for a form to contain his concerns has been closely tied to his own search for identity. These concepts of definition and identity are perhaps more immediate for May than for other Canadian filmmakers. As an immigrant (he was born in England), married to Patricia Nolin, a Quebecoise film and television actress, he has been caught in a paradoxical situation, adapting to a new country that has suffered from its own identity crisis, while living in a province that over the past twenty years has defined itself in a very conscious way. The manner in which May 36 has dealt with this complex reality is what makes his work so interesting. The confusions in the films are his confusions, very personally felt and presented. At times, his work has been autobiographical , combining elements of the self-portrait with the home movie. In some of the other films, he is not an immediately recognizable presence; the subjects exist outside himself and he merely brings his sensibility to bear on them. However, every film has been a witness to May's personal desire to perceive himself in relation to the world around him. His early films seem to ask the question , who am I, and how do I relate to the world? His last three films add a further dimension to this quest. They seem to ask, who are we, and what does our country mean to us? May's work forms itself rather neatly into four distinct groups, and for the purposes of this essay I will approach the films in pairs: Angel (1966) and Pandora (1971), Niagara Falls (1967) and McBus (1969), Sananguagat (1974) and Pictures From the 1930's (1977), and A Film for Max (1971) and Mother Tongue (1979). Although these groupings are not chronological they will help distinguish between what I perceive as the various stages of May's career. 'Jhe Abstract Films His two experimental, abstract films belie their length and apparent simplicity by distilling a number of May's concerns within their brief running times. His first film, Angel, depicts a playful encounter between a young woman and a man. Set to the wistful and vital music of Leonard Cohen, Angel uses a pair of angel's wings that the man wants to borrow from the woman as its narrative base. A brief, somewhat ephemeral, relationship is struck between the two of them, and they eventually retire to his room after their outdoor merriment. The three most interesting aspects of Angel are its pictorial image, the use of sound, and the structural strategies employed by May to reinforce the thematic content. Through the process of optical printing May eliminates all detail in his image, all contrast, any illusion of three dimensions , and finally...