Reviews

The Globe and Mail

NEW DVD A TRESPASSER'S DELIGHT

By DAVE LEBLANC

Friday, September 16, 2005 Page G10

Wind rustles a ratty curtain hanging on a glassless window. A gauge, its
lens cracked into a brilliant starburst shape, is fixed at 600 kilopascals
-- its last measurement. An old desk, drawers open as if gasping for air,
sits crookedly beside its lifelong mate, a limp and dusty chair. Strange
tools lay strewn about on a grimy work-surface, their purposes long
forgotten. Workers' smocks hang draped over cracked shower stalls like
sloughed-off snakeskin.

If these images set the heart pounding, then Robert Fantinatto's new DVD,
Echoes of Forgotten Places: Urban Exploration, Industrial Archaeology and
the Aesthetics of Decay, will be a smorgasbord for the senses.

The 43-minute film, released through his company, Scribble Media, and
available at Suspect Video locations and Pages on Queen Street West,
concerns itself with the unusual yet growing hobby of "urban archaeology."
It involves finding abandoned buildings -- usually industrial -- and
gaining entry, sometimes illegally, to photograph or just "experience" the
decaying delights contained within.

Mr. Fantinatto, a 38-year old filmmaker, editor and graduate of York
University's film program, thought his "funny little hobby" was just that
until he discovered the granddaddy of all websites,
http://www.infiltration.org, about four years ago.

 Based in Toronto and run by the mysterious "Ninjalicious" (Jeff Chapman,
who passed away in August at the tender age of 31), the website not only
convinced Mr. Fantinatto he wasn't alone, it inspired him to point his
camera at the spaces he'd been fascinated with since childhood.

But he wanted to do it right. "The media had done a few stories but they
tend to concentrate on the 'extreme sport' aspect of it," Mr. Fantinatto
explains, "and I really wanted to take an insider's look, so I decided
maybe this would make an interesting documentary."

More than interesting, the DVD is fascinating for what it doesn't
document. It's unconcerned with when these factories closed, what they
manufactured, or even where they're located (most are in Toronto, for the
record), and yet it's still riveting to watch. The fact that these
abandoned places co-exist with us yet go largely unnoticed, combined with
the fact that they once played a hugely important role in our society is
enough, it seems to say, so who cares about the details?

"I wanted to make something that anybody in the world could watch," he
explains. "Sort of this generic place that's in everybody's town."

So, Mr. Fantinatto's camera is our voyeur-by-proxy. It takes in -- with
long, luxurious camera pans (that will drive anyone afflicted with
attention deficit disorder running from their living rooms) -- everything
from bulbous Buck Rogers-type machinery on mammoth shop floors and control
rooms painted in Cold War colours to cathedral-like rooms with
criss-crossing roof beams groaning under their own weight as snow trickles
sweetly through gashes in the roof.

Beauty is found in the juxtaposition of sagging walls with blistering
paint now bling-bling'd up with candy-bright graffiti "tags" or nature's
reclamation of these formerly controlled spaces via icicles or weeds.

The spooky, repetitive and haunting soundtrack is provided by ex-Cocteau
Twins member Robin Guthrie, along with Mr. Fantinatto's wife, Leesa
Beales.

Included is a primer on the early growth of industry, with the obligatory
stock footage of sweaty, stevedore-capped workers, and shots of Toronto's
glittering downtown bank towers with a narrator's warning that they will
"one day join the countless other ruins and monuments of the past." But
Echoes does try its best to steer clear of long-winded explanations or
preachiness.

When we do meet interview subjects -- "the new archaeologists," as they're
called, who espouse the "take only pictures, leave only footprints"
philosophy -- they are bluish images contained within a tiny television
monitor sitting on an old factory push-cart, their voices echoing off the
walls of an empty room.

"I thought I'd have the space become the subject and have these people
lost within it," Mr. Fantinatto offers.

One subject says of her hobby: "You're sort of in a forgotten space and
you can be forgotten yourself for awhile while you're there."

But, ultimately, Mr. Fantinatto says, those who dare to trespass do it
because they feel a certain responsibility. "They have a real noble
mission: To preserve and record something that a lot of times the
officials that would normally do such a thing just kind of ignore," he
explains. He also points out that places such as the Distillery District,
which sell lofts dressed in "decay chic" to the middle classes, aren't
doing historians any favours.

"A lot of people in the urban exploration movement feel that if they don't
do it before these places are destroyed, there's not going to be a record.
Three, four hundred years in the future, a lot of these websites where
people have posted their photographs are actually going to become pretty
important."

Indeed . . . as will wonderful films such as Mr. Fantinatto's.

Note: The DVD includes a gallery of breathtaking still photography by
Toronto's Kendall Anderson and others from around the world. For more
information visit http://www.scribblemedia.com. At last count, a Google
search on "urban exploration web-rings" turned up 221 active websites.

Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Sunday mornings. Inquiries can
be sent to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.ca.