Friday | Oct 20 | 6pm
Screening @ Deluge
Interference Pattern
Watch Online Free: Saturday, Oct 21 (24hrs)
Test Sequence
Anne Golden | 2023 | Canada | 5 min | World Premiere
A remix of sounds and images from the Prelinger archives that showcases technology and machines.
Anne Golden is an independent curator and writer whose programs have been presented at Musée National du Québec, Edges Festival and Queer City Cinema, among others. She has written for FUSE and Canadian Theatre Review. Golden has participated in numerous panels on curatorial practices, independent distribution and horror films. Golden is co-Artistic Director of Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV). She teaches in the Media Arts Department of John Abbott College. Her novel From The Archives of vidÉo Populaire (Pedlar Press) was released in March, 2016. Golden has made twenty videos including Les Autres(1991), Fat Chance (1994), Big Girl Town(1998) The Horror Cycle (2016, 2018) The Hall (2019), Rebound (2020) and The Hunter (2020), among others.
Pixels of the Orient
Warren Chan | 2022 | Canada | 9 min | W Cdn Premiere
Pixels of the Orient appropriates Western media depictions of East Asia for a psychedelic and comedic exploration of ahistorical East Asian aesthetics and identity. Western film and television depicts East Asian culture through a pastiche of Chinese and Japanese symbols—often mixed with other influences from across Asia—filtered through an Orientalist lens that associates this “Asianness” with the exotic and mysterious.
Warren Chan is a video artist and curator with a focus on experimental works that analyze digital and new media technologies. His video art includes I Dream of Vancouver (recipient of the Air Canada Short Film or Video Award at the Reel Asian International Film Festival) and his curatorial work includes .exe, presented by Vtape. Chan received his MA in Cinema and Media Studies from York University, where he researched the usage of AI-generated images in experimental cinema. In addition, Chan has a decade of experience supporting arts organizations in communications and graphic design-related roles.
In Littleness
Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu | 2022 | USA | 8 min | Cdn Premiere
The film was shot on a regular 8mm camera and is presented in unslit form as 16mm, a screening format commonly referred to as double 8mm. When I first came into contact with this medium, I was deeply attracted by its miniature size. Eight millimetres is a very small space on which to store images. It reminds me of all kinds of things from childhood: ephemeral, wonderful, changeable. Recalling that as a child I spent most of my time with my nanny, I decided to zoom in on daily life, especially trivial household chores. At the same time, the particles and dust of the childhood world are magnified.
Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and writer whose work is grounded in literature and the conceptual avant-garde. Cherlyn’s creative activity often starts from a life event or curiosity concerning an anomaly in language or in the material world. It continues by employing methods drawn from both Eastern and Western practices and philosophies. Her working method at various times involves handcrafted material, mixed media and experimental interchange between new and old technologies.
She studied Korean Language at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan and graduated with an MFA from the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts.
Cherlyn’s media-based works have been shown internationally at venues and festivals including Edinburgh International Film Festival (UK), Helsinki Festival (Finland), Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (France), 25 FPS Festival (Zagreb), Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria, BC), Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (Taiwan), Women Make Waves Int'l Film Festival (TW), Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA), Crossroads Film Festival at SFMoMA. She received the Jury’s First Prize at Women Make Waves Int'l Film Festival, Taiwan (2014), for the film Close-ups; the Jury Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival (2018) for the film How Old Are You? How Old Were You?; the Best Experimental Film Award at South Taiwan Film Festival (2019) for the film A Study of Fly.
Interference Pattern
Ramey Newell, Niccolò Bigagli | 2022 | Canada/USA | 9 min | Cdn Premiere
Light. Sound. Matter. Intricate landscapes emerge from multitudinous overlapping waves of film and quantum physics. A collaborative film co-directed by filmmaker Ramey Newell and quantum physics PhD candidate Niccolò Bigagli as part of Imagine Science Film Festival’s 2022 Symbiosis film competition. Filmed on location in an Ultracold Quantum Matter lab at Columbia University in New York City
Ramey Newell is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in British Columbia, Canada. Her moving image work has been screened at film festivals and in galleries, museums and other art spaces throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Alchemy Moving Image Festival in Hawick, Scotland, Mountainfilm in Telluride CO, Antimatter in Victoria BC and many others. Ramey’s experimental and documentary films have also earned accolades such as the Jury’s Stellar Award (Grand Prize) at Black Maria Film Festival (2018), Best Director at Mirror Mountain Film Festival (2017) and the Symbiosis Jury Prize at Imagine Science Film Festival (2022).
Niccolò Bigagli, originally from Florence, Italy, is a PhD student in quantum physics at Columbia University in the Will Lab. His work focuses on the study of the fundamental constituents of matter, atoms and molecules, at the coldest temperatures physically attainable. He aims to gain enough insight into the building blocks of our world to refine our ability to control them and our understanding of quantum mechanics. This is his first film.
Bye Bye Now
Louise Bourque | 2022 | Canada | 8 min | W Cdn Premiere
Waving hello to the filming cameraperson, the subjects through this very gesture, are also providing a future viewer with the acknowledgment of a constant good-bye to a fleeting moment. Yet when the film is projected and the captured gesture is seen, it’s as if the subjects are saying hello again from the past. This film is an homage to the artist’s father, the man behind the camera in these personal family archives.
The filmmaker Louise Bourque recently moved back to Montréal after spending 30 years in the United States and elsewhere. Her films have been screened in more than 45 countries and broadcast on PBS and the Sundance Channel in the US, Télé-Québec in Canada and SBS in Australia. Her work has been presented by major galleries and museums worldwide, including Musée de la Civilisation and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Québec City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.
Manuale di cinematografia per dilettanti: Vol. I
[A Companion for Amateur Cinematographers: Vol 1]
Federico Di Corato | 2022 | Italy/Ethiopia | 20 min | Cdn Premiere
Set against the backdrop of Italy in the years of the fascist dictatorship, a man of means, yet unknown to history, scrutinizes the world through his small cine camera. Guiding him and teaching him is a manual; the buds of ideology are detectable beneath the seemingly impartial tone it uses to describe technique. But in his films, the ineffable signs of resistance still rise to the surface.
Born in Andria, Federico Di Corato lives in Milan. He graduated from the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA), where he now teaches film editing. He is one of the founding partners of the Re-framing Home Movies association, which works to safeguard and promote amateur film heritage. He has directed three short films. The Shack and (s)words both explore the theme of private memory through the aesthetic of video tape devices; both were presented in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. A Companion for Amateur Cinematographers: Vol. I is the result of his research into Fascist-era manuals for amateur cine enthusiasts; it was presented in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
Friday | Oct 20 | 8pm
Screening @ Deluge
Dissolution
In-Person Screening: Dissolution
Student/Senior $6 (use code 25OFF at checkout).
Watch Online Free: Saturday, Oct 21 (24hrs)
YUL 20A
Alex MacKenzie | 2023 | Canada | 6 min | World Premiere
A readymade of sorts, animating the tarmac as landing protocols fuse with painted arrows and guidelines on bruised asphalt. Distinct concrete squared segments are reinterpreted as film frames flickering past, with this hypnotic and immersive taxiing finally giving way to a rush of unbuckling.
Alex MacKenzie is a west coast-based Canadian media artist working primarily with analog film equipment and hand processed imagery. He creates works of expanded cinema, light projection installation and projector performance. His work has screened at Rotterdam International Film Festival, EXiS Experimental Film Festival in Seoul, Oberhausen in Germany, Lightcone in Paris, Kino Arsenal in Berlin and many other festivals and art spaces worldwide. Alex was founder and curator of Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, Blinding Light!! Cinema and Vancouver Underground Film Festival. He was an artist in residence at Atelier MTK in Grenobles France, Struts Gallery/Faucet Media in New Brunswick, Cineworks' Analog Film Annex in Vancouver and Daimon in Gatineau. Alex co-edited Damp: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art (Anvil Press 2008) and interviewed David Rimmer for Loop, Print, Fade + Flicker: David Rimmer's Moving Images (Anvil Press 2009). Commissions include Portal (Situated Cinema WNDX Winnipeg 2012), Auroratone: Digitalis (FilmPop Montreal 2012), The Film That Buys The Cinema (Cube Bristol 2013) and Hyborian Witch (Wrong Wave/Kensington Gore 2013). Alex is a founding member of the Iris Film Collective in Vancouver.
Skyscraper Film
Federica Foglia | 2023 | Canada/Italy | 8 min | W Cdn Premiere
Skyscraper Film is a camera-less handmade film collage created from scraps of 16mm orphan films from the 1970s. Originally produced to promote tourism in North America, these films are remediated by the filmmaker to create an abstract collage via the Emulsion Lifting/Emulsion Grafting technique. With this technique, the filmmaker lifts by hand the emulsion layer from the film base and subsequently places it on a different film base and in this way a celluloid collage is created, then re-animated.
Federica Foglia is a transnational visual artist and writer. She holds a BA in Multimedia Languages and Digital Computing for Humanities: History of Art, Theatre and Cinema from the University of Naples L'Orientale, an MFA in Film from York University, Toronto and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Arts at York University.
She is interested in issues of immigration, citizenship and identity, displacement, women of the diaspora, migrant temporalities and finding a visual language to investigate these experiences. Her practice revolves around recycled cinema, amateur filmmaking, imaginary archives. She works within the domestic space to remediate found-footage films. She is currently working on a project that involves eco-friendly emulsion lifting techniques of 16mm orphan films from private estates and family archives.
Her works have been exhibited and won awards in several art galleries and film festivals, including Images Festival, Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante MACA, BIDEODROMO, BilbaoArte Foundation, Toronto International Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova, Vancouver International Film Festival, Reykjavík International Film Festival, Visions in the Nunnery – Whitechapel UK, Groupe Intervention Vidéo Montreal, SCAD Savannah International Film Festival, ULTRAcinema Festival Mexico, Muestra de Video Arte Faenza, MIMESIS Documentary Festival, Camerimage. She recently received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship and the RBC Arts Access Fund Award for newcomer artists. Her films are distributed by Light Come, Paris, Canyon Cinema, San Francisco and CFMDC, Toronto.
Dissolution
Rennie Taylor | 2022 | Canada | 3 min | W Cdn Premiere
What does a building look like on the verge of demolition? Typically, there is no fanfare. Some, however, peek through the tiny metal meshes while the wrecking ball gets its due and wonder what was. The structure of 888 Dupont has had many functions throughout the years. Once, it was a broom factory for veterans with disabilities. At its most recent iteration, it served as an oasis for artists over many decades.
Rennie Taylor is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal and Toronto. His practice focuses on the everyday with an emphasis on nostalgic signs and symbols found in popular culture. Engaging in the practices of photography, filmmaking and collage, he explores themes of consumerism, the handmade and obsolescence. He investigates decay within technology which corresponds to his material manipulation of celluloid, ephemera and found objects. His short experimental Super 8 films and videos have been shown internationally and nationally. He received his BFA with Distinction in Photography at Toronto Metropolitan University and an Ontario College Diploma in Fine Arts at Centennial College. Rennie previously served as a board member at the 8fest Small Gauge Film Festival and is currently involved with the artist collective [UN]PROMPTU.
NE Corridor
Joshua Gen Solondz | 2022 | USA | 7 min | W Cdn Premiere
“Accumulated over three years, Solondz’s film is a crowded collage of gurgling paint, jagged splices, errant sprocket holes and puzzling images that conjure the densely material frames of the late queer avant-garde filmmaker Luther Price. A messy assemblage in purples and oranges,
NE Corridor is at once a visceral explosion of color and a tortured object.” – Leo Goldsmith
Joshua Gen Solondz is an artist working in moving image, sound and performance. He’s screened in a variety of festivals including Images, Toronto International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Onion City, Black Maria, Portland International, Milwaukee Underground, CAAMFest, San Diego Asian Film Festival, Chicago Underground, Locarno, Mar del Plata, FIC Valdivia, Viennale and New York Film Festival. He's also shown at venues such as REDCAT, Light Industry, UnionDocs, Harvard Film Archive, MoMA, DINCA, NYU, Red Room, ATA, AGX and Black Hole Cinematheque.
Solondz has received awards from Athens International Film+Video Festival, Spectral Film Festival, Black Maria, New Orleans Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival and Ann Arbor Film Festival as well as commissions for shows at Heliopolis, ACRE TV, WNDX and microscope gallery. They have an ongoing collaboration with Jim Supanick as the electronic slime duo known as SynthHumpers. Solondz was a 2019 MacDowell Colony Fellow.
Josh studied at Bard College and received their MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. They live in Brooklyn NY with his partner and occasional collaborator Emma Brenner-Malin.
Clear Ice Fern
Mark Street | 2023 | USA | 12 min | Cdn Premiere
Images shot through architectural glass on Super 8 film in the dead of night in NYC. The title refers to one of the glass samples I used to frame up images of Times Square and other nightspots in NYC. The city peeks its head in as an off screen character, but the glass bends and twists it in its own warped and wonderful way. Music by Erik Friedlander.
Mark Street has been making films, videos and installations for 30 years. His work has moved from tactile, abstract explorations of 16mm film to essays on the urban experience to improvised feature length narratives. He has shown at places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery in Washington DC as well as venues such as the Point Reyes California Oyster Farm. He graduated from Bard College (BA 1986) and San Francisco Art Institute (MFA 1992). He has shown work in the New York Museum of Modern Art Cineprobe series (1991, 1994), at Anthology Film Archives (1993, 2006, 2009), Millennium (1990,1996) and San Francisco Cinematheque (1986, 1992, 2009). His work has appeared at the Tribeca (five times), Sundance, Rotterdam, New York, London, San Francisco, New York Underground, Sarajevo, Viennale, Ourense (Spain), Mill Valley, South by Southwest and other film festivals. His projects has been supported by a number of grants from foundations, including the Jerome Foundation, the Film Arts Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council and NY Experimental TV Center. In 2006 he was asked to participate in the Hallwalls Artists Residency Program in Buffalo NY. In 2018 he was a Visiting Artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Some of his film work has been performed live (at Tonic, Galapagos and Le Petit Versaille in NYC) with accompanying musicians, including Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Bradford Reed, Marco Testoni and Jane Scarpantoni. In 2007 at Hallwalls he presented a multi media show entitled Inside and Out: Infected Districts and Memory Lanes with Buffalo performance and music groups Real Dream Cabaret and Open Music Ensemble. He has curated and judged several film and art exhibitions including Ventana al Sur: An Evening of Argentine Experimental Film (with Lynne Sachs) at Anthology Film Archives and Pacific Film Archive in 2009 as well as Video Landscapes (2005) and Real Abstractions (2007) both at Fordham University’s Center Art Gallery. His 2016 essay “In Defense of Street Photography in an Iphone Age” appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, online. His self-published book of photographs 100 Sides of a Sphere is on sale at Printed Matter in NYC. Two of his personal essays “Film is Dead: Long Live Film” and “Festival of Flight” appeared in Film Arts Magazine in 2008. An essay about film funding “Who’s Asking?” appeared in Millennium Film Journal #51 entitled Experimental Documentary. Cinema Argentina – An Argentine excursion: film frames and talk therapy (with Lynne Sachs and Pablo Marin) appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Gonzo Circus. He has led community workshops a variety of venues (Echo Park Film Center in LA, Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington NC, Fondacion d’Arte Contemporaneo in Montevideo Uruguay, Utopia Art Space in Murcia Spain, Cinema Tonali in Tijuana, Mexico) on a variety of topics, including “The Devil is in the Details: Urban Street Videography.” He is Professor of Visual Arts at Fordham University where he teaches film/video production and other courses that engage contemporary artistic practice.
NYC RGB
Viktoria Schmid | 2023 | Austria | 7 min | W Cdn Premiere
NYC RGB is part of a series of works in which Viktoria Schmid deals with historical colour film processes. Using a special technique of colour separation through RGB filters, the real temporal dimension can be concentrated on a cinematic triple exposure. The film strip was sent through the camera three times, exposing the material with a different colour filter on each pass. First red, green, then blue. This method borrows from historical colour film processes and corresponds to a separation of colour by the photoreceptors in the eye. The temporally staggered recording of the colour separations generates perceptual patterns in the condensation on a single film strip that go beyond a human experience of time and the perception of the human eye. What becomes visible in the colour overlays, respectively in the repetitions and the resulting differences, celebrates the past moment in its uniqueness. With the triple exposure, real time is condensed and a new cinematic time level is generated.
The film was shot over a period of several months from the 20th floor of an apartment in New York City, where the artist lived in 2020 during the initial phase of the pandemic, and finally again in 2022. Schmid's work explores everyday perceptions and how they can be sharpened through her art. Musician Liew Niyomkarn composed a sound design from field recordings made on site and synthesizer triads that are the acoustic counterpart to the RGB colours of the film.
Viktoria Schmid is visual artist and filmmaker based in Vienna who is working at the interface of the cinematic and the exhibition space. Schmid studied at the Friedl-Kubelka-School, received her BA in film theory from the University of Vienna and her MA from the University of Art in Linz. Her installations and films have been shown internationally.
Vesitornisinfonia [Water Tower Symphony]
Panu Johansson | 2023 | Finland | 20 min | NA Premiere
A tribute to water towers and the memories associated with them in the form of an experimental film. As the title suggests, the piece gives the spotlight to Finnish water towers, the real eye-catchers of the local constructed environment. According to recent studies these towers have become town symbols that create local identity. Vesitornisinfonia not only documents, but also revives this kind of everyday environment typical to Finland. These slowly disappearing surreal buildings deserve to be depicted through art: they deserve a visual symphony of their own.
Panu Johansson is a media artist and experimental filmmaker from Finland. He works with moving image, photography and sound. His works have been exhibited in various festivals, exhibitions and microcinemas since 2000. Reoccurring themes in Johansson's work are memories, landscape, the history of experimental film and cultural history. When working with moving image he prefers analogue film, though he is open to all materials. Johansson collects images and sounds eagerly and also likes to use "found footage” materials whenever possible. His works could be described with terms such as landscape film, diary film or personal film.