by Erin Riley

A childhood spent watching Charlie Chaplin films. Early experiments with the Super-8 camera. A Bolex of his own. The genesis of high school student Noah Lichtblau’s film Cake Marchers, is long but very clear.

Cake Marchers made its debut during last year’s http://www.gallery44.org/cameralinks CAMERALINKS exhibition at Gallery 44. It is a black-and-white silent film just over three and half minutes long, and is a combination of live-action and stop-motion animation. The film, set in a kitchen, initially takes us through the process of baking a cake. Once the cake is done, the camera moves in for a close up, focusing on the first row of decorations. These tiny carved figures appear to be British soldiers wearing bearskin hats like those worn by guards at Buckingham Palace. “I had them on a lot of birthday cakes growing up,” recalls Noah. They came to be part of the Lichtblau household as a gift from his grandmother and they just seemed to stick around. When looking for inspiration for the film, Noah thought these figures would make good characters.  During the film, the figures start to move—it’s as if the one in the middle is in charge and he’s barking some military commands. The camera pulls back as the soldiers march in kaleidoscopic patterns. Noah says the formations are loosely based on actual military marching formations. The figures appear to move by themselves, through a process of stop-motion animation, which requires painstaking accuracy. 

I had to wonder why. Why, in this age of i-everything would a anyone want to make a completely analogue, black-and-white, silent film when it would have been much easier to create a video using a phone, edit it on a laptop, and compress it down and post it online? 

Noah admits that the process was labour-intensive, but that’s what drew him to it. “I had to be so involved in every step of the way to make it work.” In order to accomplish this, Noah became a member of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers Toronto (LIFT). Much like Gallery 44, LIFT is an artist-run organization that offers workshops, equipment rentals and facilities to its members.

Noah is busy finishing his last year of high school at the Inglenook Community School in Toronto. But it was last year, while he was a student at Northern Secondary School that he decided to take advantage of an independent study course. Cake Marchers was one of his final projects. Noah chose Kathleen Woolcott, a photography teacher, as his project supervisor, because his film and its technical challenges had more in common with black and white photography than it did with video. It was Ms. Woolcott who brought the CAMERALINKS exhibition to Noah’s attention, and encouraged him to submit his work.

On the subject of mentors, Noah remarked that his teachers and mentors act as a grounding force that allows him to go out and experiment and try new things. But he insists that the initiative must come from within. He does acknowledge however, that without the support and help of Ms. Woolcott, that the “film would probably be still in the fridge.”

Erin is a member of Gallery 44 where she volunteers with the Education Committee. Her most recent body of work, Vocation - a series of portraits of military chaplains, can be viewed at www.fotographer.ca