Weekend AM

Filmmaker Ruth Lawrence and Memorial University professor Barbara Neis are organizing the Fishing for the Future Festival, a festival to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the cod collapse.

A group of grade 9 students from the York School in Toronto spent last week in St. John's creating a documentary about Newfoundland culture and how it is shaped by our history ... and vice versa. It's all a part of the schools ICE program - the Integrated Canadian Experience. The whole idea of ICE is for students to have an authentic experience with the people and the country. While here, the young people spoke to artists and teachers and politicians and Dave the musician... and to me. Toby Sparwasser-Siroka, Julie Jenkins, Hannah Kahn, Gillian Kiessling and Ben Feldman are the students. They joined me in the studio along with Sean Mitchell, director of Student Life at York, and began by asking Sean to better describe ICE for us.

For the last few years Matthew Hare has shared the musical stage playing in the local group,' The Rents". Now Matthew has changed that musical stage to a solo setup. Just him and his guitar performing his emotional acoustic alternative origional music. And now with the release of his debut solo CD," This Time Last Year", Matthew is finding that fan's who give it a listen can relate to his musical message. Recently Matthew sat down with Mack Furlong to talk about his new direction.

The federal budget brought down by the Conservative government in Ottawa has resulted in more cutbacks to CBC's funding and the dominoes have been falling across the country. A couple of those dominoes flipped here in Newfoundland and Labrador. CBC has announced the decommissioning of both our inhouse recording facility, Studio F, and the mobile unit, used for remote recordings at concerts and festivals across the province. Many groups are also upset by this turn of events, and arts organizations have come together to issue statements about their concerns. David Chafe is the chair of MusicNL and he joins me in the studio this morning. Welcome back to the Weekend Arts magazine, David.

The burg of Corner Brook shivers in fear ... of the Tentacle's Claw! Deep beneath the surface of Bonne Bay lurks the creature so fearsome, so blood thirsty, so devious, that a movie must be made about it. Enter Tara Manuel and her band of enthusiastic monsters and victims to film a script about the mortal danger in which Corner Brook quakes. Tara and her husband Michael Rigler had a dream ... or maybe a nightmare! ... to produce a B-movie, no-budget, creature feature, schlock horror show in Corner Brook. Be careful what you wish for! I spoke with Tara a couple years ago about her fascination with b-movies. You may recall Shadowy Souls, a puppet show she took around the province, so this week I rang her up in Corner Brook and began by asking her how low-budget is this new no-budget film.

You've heard all the buzz about local singer songwriter John Cossar who waited until later in life to begin their respective musical careers. A lifetime's worth of experiences began pouring out in their songs. Now John, from Burgeo, and Jim, from New Glasgow, are on an Atlantic provinces tour that brings them to Newfoundland next week for fourteen shows across the island portion of the province. John you will know from his Liner Notes appearance here on the Weekend Arts Magazine and other local programmes, his story about making sense of his life through his songwriting. Jim you will now meet, through the magic of a telephone interview. I spoke with Jim earlier this week from his home.

Renate Pohl is active in so many different arenas that she has three websites to keep her friends and followers up to date! She's an artist, a lecturer, an athlete ... and a space junkie. Renate was born in Gander, raised in Centreville, and has lived, studied and worked in Toronto, Edmonton, London England and Tokyo. Her interests are so broad and varied that it hardly comes as any surprise that she wants artists to have an impact on space. How, she'll find out as time goes by, but she wants to bring art and space together. She is about to go where no stained glass / lighting designer has gone before ... the International Space University in Florida.

It was no surprise that CBC was targeted in the federal government's recent budget. CBC has been seen as the enemy or the other for some time now. But the extent of damage is still unrolling. The CBC cutbacks have dealt a blow to this province's recording artists. The state-of-the-art recording studio in the broadcast centre and the mobile recording unit housed in a truck have been decommissioned. Live recordings at festivals and concerts will be reduced from over 50 a year, to perhaps four.

Deanne Foley has won awards for all her short films Trombone Trouble, This Boy, and The Magnificent Molly McBride. What more encouragement could one receive to move on to their first feature? Beat Down is that feature and Deanne has, predictably, won awards with it. Beat Down premiered at last October's St. John's International Women's Film Festival, and I asked Deanne, now that the real work has begun, what she's up to.

She gave up her medical practice; she sold her SUV; she put her Martha Stewart house on the market; and then packed up a few belongings into a couple of suitcases and followed her heart - she moved to France. That's the very short capsule summary of Bobbi French as she makes her dream come true. Bobbi was in St. John's this week launching her book Finding Me in France. I spoke with her in our studios.

Deanne Foley has won awards for all her short films Trombone Trouble, This Boy, and The Magnificent Molly McBride. What more encouragement could one receive to move on to their first feature? Beat Down is that feature and Deanne has, predictably, won awards with it. Beat Down premiered at last October's St. John's International Women's Film Festival, and I asked Deanne, now that the real work has begun, what she's up to.

Tomorrow night, the Quintessential Vocal Ensemble returns to the Basilica in St. John's for sixth Candlelight Concert. It's their last performance before heading to Ottawa for MusicFest and Podium 2012. You heard a young SATB quartet here a couple weeks ago who are also attending PODIUM. Tomorrow's show features new work by Eric Whitacre; sacred music of Rajaton and Anuna; a guest performance by the Holy Heart Chamber Choir; and the premiere of The Al Pittman Suite, commissioned by QVE and composed by Kathleen Allan - marrying music to three poems by one of Newfoundland's best-known poets. I spoke with Kathleen by phone from her Vancouver home earlier this week and asked her who picked Al Pittman as the subject of the suite - her or QVE director Susan Quinn.

Love him or loathe him, Stan Rogers is remembered by most of us of a certain age. Rogers worked hard - as a writer, performer and tireless self-promoter - to make a career in the folk music business in Canada. Hi efforts paid off in that he is considered by some to be an icon. Stan's brother Garnet has made a career of stoking the Stan flame, touring incessantly with Stan's material. And now Stan's son Nathan, who has carved out an increasingly well-respected career of his own, is taking his father's songs on the road as the Rogers Legacy Continues.

The NL Arts and Letters Awards celebrate their 60th anniversary this year and as usual, Weekend AM rounded up some award-winning poets from the Junior Division.Ellen Power, Julianne Meaney, Maria Browne and Jinji Dawson.

This year, the focus of the camp is on zombies. More on that in a moment. And for the first time, Framed is moving outside St. John's and heading to the West Coast, to Corner Brook and Stephenville. With partnership involvement and support from the College of the North Atlantic, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College and the Nfld and Lab Film development corporation, Jana Gillis and seven other post-secondary students will film a script by Jana, who is a past winner of the Rant Like Rick contest. Jackie Hynes from the Women's Filem Festival will serve as mentor to the group. I spoke with Jana and Jackie this week and began by asking Jackie to tell us about Framed.