Programmed by Brett Kashmere (in attendance)
A unique but overlooked confluence in Canadian film history, the “Escarpment School” outlines a loosely knit band of Ontario-based filmmakers that came of age in the late-1970s. Its affiliates include the celebrated experimental filmmakers Philip Hoffman, Mike Hoolboom, Richard Kerr, Carl Brown, Gary Popovich and Steve Sanguedolce, who studied together at Sheridan College, under the tutelage of Rick Hancox and Jeffrey Paull. Over the past thirty years, the Escarpment School cineastes have helped to inaugurate Canada’s first-person cinema; reinvented documentary as a mode for self-expression and formal exploration; extended and deepened the rich landscape tradition in Canadian art; and inspired the next generation of filmmakers through their work and their teaching.
Although varied in tone and texture, the films in this program share numerous qualities, including an attention to geography, a drive to record reality, the filtering of documentary material through individual experience, the looming presence of America, and a process-based, formalist approach to nonfiction. These characteristics in turn reflect the twin impact of the New American Cinema and its conterminous postwar movements, especially Beat literature, as well as the Canadian social documentary tradition, which were often viewed side-by-side in the “Escarpment School” classroom.
The films in this program are distributed by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
This program is the first in a four screening series originally curated for the Winnipeg Cinematheque. www.brettkashmere.com/escarpment.html
image: The Road Ended at the Beach by Philip Hoffman (1983)
Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk
A 16mm film conceived in the format of a TV play and set in a seniors’ care home. Part documentary, part fiction, the script for the film was a collaboration with writer and critic George Clark and was constructed from verbatim transcripts of a discussion group held over a period of five months with the residents of four care homes in Camden, London. Taking B. S. Johnson’s 1971 experimental novel House Mother Normal as its formal departure point and employing the structural logic of a musical score, the script is edited into a vertical structure, in which eight voices or eight monologues occur simultaneously. The Future’s Getting Old Like The Rest of Us features actors Roger Booth, Corinne Skinner Carter, Janet Henfrey, Ram John Holder, Anne Firbank, John Tilbury, Jane Wood, and William Hoyland; the latter starred in B. S. Johnson’s films You're Human Like the Rest of Them (1967) and Paradigm (1969). Commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery, London, as part of the Skills Exchange project, in which artists swap skills and develop ideas for social and architectural change with the elderly, care workers, and young people (adapted from LUX, London). Colour, 16mm to HD. 48 mins.
Beatrice Gibson (b. 1978) is an artist based in London. Investigating ideas around voice, speech, collective production, and the problems of representation, her films deploy notation and conversation as paradigms for their production. Gibson’s film A Necessary Music, made in collaboration with composer Alex Waterman, won the Tiger Award for best short at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2009. Her recent solo exhibitions include “The Tiger's Mind,” presented at Künsterlhaus Stuttgart in 2010. She is currently working on a new publishing project with editor and typographer Will Holder.
Distributed by LUX artists moving images.
Nicolas Boone is (b. 1974) is a visual artist based in Paris. He graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2001. His earlier work used the language of filmmaking to produce ephemeral performances without film stock. Eventually, his meticulously improvised “parades” were recorded and edited into film loops to create a living discourse around the death of cinema. La Transhumance Fantastique (2006) recycles the codes of fantastic and horror cinema while a tracking shot along train rails leads nowhere — or towards a Western, a conquest, an exodus towards utopia, a future determined by someone else. As in all of Boone’s films, the central character is a crowd of extras forming a compact corpus and obeying simple instructions commanded by a megaphone: the shout of the director-dictator, the authority of the absurd, the conductor of non-sense. Boone’s moving mises-en-scène emerge from improvisations in which chaos invites chance and accidents do happen. Transbup (2009) is a more traditional narrative that emerged after a massive anti-ad campaign made up of nine shorts (BUP - La série). Transbup exposes the different faces of the media’s totalitarian invasion of our individual freedom. Boone points fingers at all institutions and their perverse mechanisms. Here, the characters are looking for an escape from a world Boone holds in disgust.
Transbup. 2009, Colour, DV. 50mins, France.
La Transhumance Fantastique. 2006, Colour, DV. 55mins, France.
Programmed in parallel with the exhibition LIQUIDATION and the production of Nothing Happening at VIVO Media Arts Centre. Co-presented with the LIVE International Performance Art Biennale and Swarm Festival of Artist Run Culture. LIQUIDATION and Nothing Happening are produced with the generous support of the Consulat général de France à Vancouver.
image: La Transhumance Fantastique (2006)
DIM Cinema will be taking summer holidays for the months of July and August 2011. Programming will resume on September 19 2011 with a retrospective of French Video Artist Nicolas Boone's oeuvre, co-presented by the French Consulate and VIVO Media Arts Centre.
Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk
Double-8, Super-8 and 16mm films made in the 1970s by Hank Bull, Kate Craig, Patrick Ready, Byron Black and friends. Live accompaniment by Hank Bull and Patrick Ready.
The Time Dilation Machine was a device for travelling through the seven dimensions of time and space, devised by HP (Hank Bull and Patrick Ready) in 1975. Constructed inside an old steamer trunk, it employed mirrors, tinfoil and hanging photo-puppets to trigger teleportation, and was accessed by means of a peephole in one end.
Similar technology, found buried in a cardboard box of 8mm films, takes us back to a time before video when a group of Vancouver pataphysicians made investigations into transmutation and altered consciousness. All that remains of their research today is a collection of filmic fragments.
This collection of Hank Bull’s unedited 8mm and 16mm reels include Spadina Special (1971), Helen and Monica (1972), Swing (1974, with Kate Craig), HP Movie (1975, with Patrick Ready), Rembrandt (and Goya) (1977, with Patrick Ready and Kate Craig), How to Make Good Whisky (1977, with Patrick Ready), and The HP Sedan Bottle (1975, with Patrick Ready, Byron Black and Randy Gledhill).
Hank Bull is an artist born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1949. In 1973 he moved to Vancouver to join the Western Front. There his practice expanded into performance, video, radio and telecommunications art. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the New York Museum of Modern Art, and was included in the Venice Biennale 1986, Dokumenta 9 1987, and Ars Electronica 1989. In 1999 he co-founded the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A), where he served as executive director until 2010.
Presented in collaboration with the Signal & Noise Media Arts Festival, June 23-27, 2011, at VIVO Media Arts Centre. www.signalandnoise.ca
Sponsored by Tom Lee Music
Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk
Ben Russell in attendance + performance
In 2005, Chicago media artist Ben Russell initiated an inquiry into the alchemy of cinema, trance, travel and psychedelic ethnography. This inquiry has since conjured seven films, collectively known as the Trypps series. The first gestures in Trypps Number One were cameraless and focused on manipulating the essential elements of cinema: light and dark. By Trypps Number Three, Russell was directing the cinematographic apparatus on the collective transcendence of a concert by Rhode Island noise band Lighting Bolt. Immersed in the deep chiaroscuro and soft focus of the throbbing spotlit audience, Russell draws out the deeply corporeal and metaphysical embodiment of this contemporary youth ritual. The adaptation of trance ritual within hybrid culture lead to Trypps #6 (Malobi). Structures of ethnographic spectatorship are negotiated, and the body of the filmmaker folds into the cinematographic process. Trypps #7 (Badlands) fully indulges the semiotics of the moving image. The perception of a woman’s LSD trip in Badlands National Park is suspended between the gullies and horizons of the desert landscape. “Concerned with notions of the romantic sublime, phenomenological experience, and secular spiritualism, the work continues Russell’s unique investigation into the possibilities of cinema as a site for transcendence” (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago).
Black and White Trypps Number One. 2005, B&W, 16mm, silent. 6mins, USA-Dubai.
Black and White Trypps Number Two. 2006, B&W, 16mm, silent. 9mins, USA.
Black and White Trypps Number Three. 2007, Colour, 35mm, sound. 12mins, USA.
Black and White Trypps Number Four. 2008, B&W, 16mm, sound. 11mins, USA.
Trypps #5 (Dubai). 2008, Colour, 16mm, silent. 3mins, USA-Dubai.
Trypps #6 (Malobi). 2009, Colour, 16mm, sound. 12mins, USA-Suriname.
Trypps #7 (Badlands). 2010, Colour, Super 16mm on HD, sound. 10mins, USA.
Black and White Gods. 2008, B&W, dual 16mm live performance with sound. 20mins, USA.
+
Programmed by Allison Collins
A communiqué from the past, performed as sex, love, loss, mystery, and technology. The work of Susan Britton, one of the original artists and founders of Toronto-based Vtape (a leading Canadian distributor of independent, artist-driven video art), has been out of distribution — and thus out of the public eye - for almost 15 years. Recently restored, this body of work reveals an important early voice from the past life of video art in Canada. Campy sci-fi concerns mixed with synth beats accompany her inquests into the future. Offering sceptical inquiry into ideology and the feminine subject, her short works act as vignettes, bringing us subject positions and rhetoric from our recent past. Britton’s longer narratives play with their own formal nature, with deft use of apparatus and technology to help the story along and then pull it apart. This screening experiments with loose ends, as befits Britton’s proto-punk personae. Offering a sample of work from her sprawling, ambitious body of video art, it is accompanied by a catalogue—fully illustrated, with a full videography.
PROGRAM
Why I Hate Communism No.1. 1976, Video, 3 mins.
Freeze Frame. 1983, Video, 2 mins.
1984. 1983, Video, 4 mins. — Previously unreleased
Casting Call. 1979, Video, 36 mins.
Up Down Strange. 1981, Video, 55 mins.
____
This programme originated at Vtape January 2011. It was entitled "Suspicious Futures: Select Works by Susan Britton" and programmed by Allison Collins.
Operating as a distributor, a mediatheque and a resource centre with an emphasis on the contemporary media arts, Vtape’s mandate is to serve both artists and audiences by assisting and encouraging the appreciation, pedagogy, preservation, restoration and exhibition of media works by artists and independents. www.vtape.org
The original Vtape programme included an alternate selection of work by Susan Britton, including Tutti Quanti (1978), Standard Format No. 1 Da-Da Go-Go (1980), and Rent Due (1983).
The Curatorial Incubator has offered support to emerging curators with a focus on video art since 2002. Mentoring includes professional development workshops and editing assistance for published curatorial essays and monographs, as well as exhibition support, artists’ fees, promotion and publication.
Programmed by cheyanne turions
According to the International Organization for Migration, the total number of international migrants has increased from an estimated 150 million people in 2000 to 214 million people today. As the number of migrants has grown, so have their destinations diversified, broadening the prevalence of both journey (on the part of the immigrant or refugee) and reception (on the part of the host community). People have always wandered, but the recent proliferation of migration and mobility in our globalized world shifts the reference point of migrant and fixed resident alike: everyone is a fellow traveler. While nation-states have long provided a foundation for understanding alliances between large groups of people, today’s cultural flows spill across national borders. Migrants are one element among many that constitute global circulations of culture, politics and economy, and the contemporary denizen must continually negotiate acculturations between the many communities that compose their lives. “The Permanent Longing for Elsewhere” features works that hone in on a sense of frustration that often accompanies experiences of migration, exploring how national identification is breaking down as a suitable frame of reference in a globalized world. By stimulating the political imagination, these films prompt a consideration of what is to be both done and undone in light of contemporary, itinerant realities.
PROGRAM
Rainer Ganahl, I Hate Karl Marx. 2010, Video, 6mins, USA-Austria.
Bouchra Khalili, Mapping Journey #3. 2009, Video, 4mins, Morocco-France.
John Smith, Flag Mountain. 2010, Video, 8mins, Great Britain.
Daniela Swarowsky, Messages from Paradise #1, Egypt: Austria - About the Permanent Longing for Elsewhere. 2009, Video, 44mins, Austria-Netherlands-Germany.
+
Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk and Dominic Angerame at Canyon Cinema
Chick Strand (1931-2009) courted her films as a nurturer and lover. She worked intuitively, trusting her attraction to the sensuality of people, landscapes, and gestures. Influenced by west coast experimental filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s and her own education in anthropology and ethnography, Strand immersed her filmmaking in the joy of being with people. For 30 years, she made films about the people and landscapes of California and Mexico. “To leave out the spirit of the people presents a thin tapestry of the culture, easy to rent, lacking in strength and depth. I want to know really what it is like to be a breathing, talking, moving, emotional, relating individual in the society.” Strand also strove for intimacy with her camera, keeping it close to her body and trusting her own weight and motion to persuade its gaze. Her physical intimacy with her subjects is evidenced in the dominance of close-ups. The resulting shallow depth of field creates kinetic compositions of horizons flattened against sun-stroked faces and cropped bodies in motion. Her appreciation of synchronicity, intuition and romance is also evident in her found-footage collages. “If poetry is the art of making evocative connections between otherwise dissimilar phenomena, then Chick Strand is a great poet, for these films transcend their material to create a surreal and sublime universe beyond reason” (Gene Youngblood).
PROGRAM
Angel Blue Sweet Wings. 1966, 16mm, 3mins.
Artificial Paradise. 1986, 16mm, 13mins.
By the Lake. 1986, 16mm, 10mins.
Cartoon Le Mousse. 1979, 16mm, 15mins.
Coming Up For Air. 1986, 16mm, 27mins.
Kristallnacht. 1979, 16mm, 7mins.
Mujer De Milfuegos. 1976, 16mm, 15mins.
Friend's suicide inspires movie 'Mark' presents portrait of animal-rights activist
By Katherine Monk
Postmedia News
Monday, January 24, 2011
http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/etoday/story.html?id=505fbcea-e6...
Mike Hoolboom clawed himself out of the grave through art after he was diagnosed with HIV more than a decade ago. Every new film became a foothold, and every new boundary-pushing piece of experimentation gave him strength. But when a close friend and colleague hanged himself without warning in 2007, Hoolboom fell back into the hole.
"At that point, I realized I was compelled to make a movie about my friend, Mark. I started talking to the other people I knew who knew him. And we revisited that moment of impact of feeling completely bewildered and stunned. It was like the tile that we were all standing on was swept away," says Hoolboom.
"The one thing we all believed was that Mark was the last person who would have taken his own life. He was the guy who really took care of everyone and went out of his way to make people feel good. He did all that for other people, but in the end, he couldn't do it for himself."
Hoolboom spent the next three years going through photos, films and home-movie footage of his late buddy, and former film editor, Mark Karbusicky. The result is Mark, a feature-length documentary that presents an impressionist portrait of the animal-rights activist and all-around giver who failed in the ultimate human quest to love himself.
It's a potent piece of work, and perhaps the most cohesive, compelling and altogether accessible film to emerge from Hoolboom's experimental atelier that now houses a significant oeuvre, including more than 30 films, conceptual art pieces, books and essays.
When Hoolboom wrapped the intimate piece last year, he figured it would be the last movie he would ever make.
"I retired as a filmmaker," says the Toronto-based heir to Canada's experimental film tradition.
"I realized I needed to step back and just see who I am. There's this pressure, especially in Toronto, to be doing something. In fact, it seems people are only defined by what they do. When you go to a party, people ask you, 'Oh, what are you doing?' and that means more than just what you are doing; it means, 'Who are you?'"
Hoolboom says in the wake of Mark's exit, he needed to find an out-door of his own, and he turned the handle through yoga.
"Last year was really tough. I lost other dear friends, including Babz Chula," says Hoolboom, who cast Vancouver icons Chula and Gabrielle Rose in his cutting-edge Kanada, perhaps the most insightful peek into the Canadian psyche ever created.
"(Losing my friends) . . . was enough to make me recreate my life. Yoga was a part of it. I was looking for a release . . . . I was hoping to gain a deeper understanding of what happened, which is why I made the movie," he says.
Like all survivors of a loved one's suicide, Hoolboom found himself dealing with guilt, anger and depression, and not even the completion of the film portrait gave him any sense of catharsis.
"I don't know who I made the film for. Maybe for other people like Mark . . . maybe for other people like me. Maybe for myself alone. I don't know."
Either way, it made Hoolboom look long and hard at his own life, his own art and his own mode of expression. It made him see the mask we all wear in our everyday lives to cope, and to make sure others see the appropriately well-adjusted exterior.
"I think there's a register of all emotions," says Hoolboom, borrowing a musical term.
"Mark really tried to appear light and carefree all the time . . . but there was always something he was holding back."
As a result, Hoolboom says he looks at people differently now. "I really look at people's faces. I imagine what they may look like when they get old. I really study the subtle reactions, and I've noticed that men and women present themselves to the outside world so differently."
Men have a tendency to find an outward appearance they feel comfortable with, and stick with it.
"Men will present that same face every day," he says.
"But women . . . women are far more comfortable showing the nuances. You can see the fluidity of their reactions in their faces and it's all there to read for anyone who's interested."
In learning to really see people, and after a year of self-induced creative exile, Hoolboom decided retirement wasn't really for him: "The truth is, I needed to pay my rent."
Now officially unretired, Hoolboom is busy retooling and recharging. "I have to say, in taking a step back from filmmaking, and coming back to it, I've never loved it as much as I do now. I'm totally energized by it."
Hoolboom says it's the sense of connection that seems to be the most potent part of the creative voyage.
"I think there are times when we all feel totally alone," he says.
"But the truth is we are not alone -- ever. Even when we're in pain, and we feel the need to withdraw and shut down, we're not alone. . . . "
- - -