Moze and his movies

Roxana is the brain child of my friend Moze Mossanen, an accomplished dance filmmaker who has been working in Canadian film and television for more than twenty years. His movies are unlike anything else in this country - they tell stories entirely through dance narratives. Often based on classic works, his adaptations look for the timeless themes of love and loss and finds a contemporary vision for them. In recent years he has made almost a film a year, usually shooting in the fall some time and airing in January. His last film, From Time to Time, a musical fantasy story of a woman's life set to the music of Joni Mitchell, was aired in 2004. Roxana will be broadcast on both CBC and Bravo, sometime in 2006.

Roxana is an adaptation of the Daniel Defoe novel, Lady Roxana, written in 1724 about a woman who finds herself improving her circumstances through accidental moral compromise that eventually becomes quite calculating. Updating the story, Moze has set his scenario in the Montreal and Ottawa of the Diefenbaker eras and this Roxana is a burlesque house dancer down on both money and luck. Through a series of associations with men she is willing to give herself to, she improves her situation until she has become something of a political courtesan.

The great beauty and utter uniqueness of Moze's work is always the dance narrative. The work (as he puts it) is "created through a blend of storytelling, gesture, dance and music, the score itself accentuating the entire length of this wordless film and combining sound effects, both synchronous and non-synchronous," to create a story that is both impressionistic and very specific to time and place. That pic, by the way, is from the last film, From Time to Time.

Welcome to the world of Roxana. Slowly over the next weeks and months, I will watch the movie come to life, from rehearsals to production to the post. Partly for my own pleasure, and partly to increase appreciation for my friend's beautiful canon of work, this blog is a series of waltzes at a ball that promises to be full of enchantment.