MOMENTS OF PERCEPTION: Experimental Film in Canada

A selection of works by historical and contemporary avant garde Canadian filmmakers, this programme offers a glimpse into the vibrant landscape of moving image artistry in Canada.

Inspired by the recent release of the extensive compendium book of the same title, edited by Barbara Sternberg and Jim Shedden, which features essays & profiles by Michael Zryd and Stephen Broomer tracing the various figures, film scenes, co-ops and movements from the 1950's to the present day.

The 70 minute screening will feature 16mm films & videos by Joyce Wieland, Keewatin Dewdney, David Rimmer, Gariné Torossian, Jennifer Dysart, Rhayne Vermette, Richard Kerr, Al Razutis, Christine Lucy Latimer and Arthur Lipsett.

Barbara Sternberg will join us in person to introduce this event and copies of the book Moments of Perception: Experimental film in Canada (published by Goose Lane Editions) will be available for purchase at the gallery.

Program

WATER SARK
Joyce Wieland | 1965 | sound | 16mm | 13 minutes

I decided to make a film at my kitchen table, there is nothing like knowing my table. The high art of the housewife. You take prisms, glass, lights and myself to it. The Housewife is High. Water Sark is a film sculpture, being made while you wait. (J.W.)

THE MALTESE CROSS MOVEMENT
Alexander Keewatin Dewdney | 1967 | sound | 16mm | 8 minutes

The Maltese Cross Movement (1967) is an artwork consisting of two components: a seven minute film and a 24-page scrapbook with collages surrounded by pictographs. The artwork was produced by A. K. Dewdney, a London, Ontario based artist / filmmaker / poet turned mathematician / computer scientist. The MCM book/film is densely codified based on a relatively simple rebus. Through the film, Dewdney teaches us how to read pictures and uses the Maltese Cross to challenge our perception of reality as a continuous stream. Life, what is it but a dream? (Clint Enns)

TREEFALL
David Rimmer | 1970 | silent | 16mm | 5 minutes

Treefall was originally made for a dance performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery, April, 1970. Structured in the form of two loops of high-contrast images of trees falling, reprinted and overlapped. (CFMDC)

GIRL FROM MOUSH
Gariné Torossian | 1993 | sound | 16mm | 6 minutes

Girl from Moush is a poetic montage of the artist's journey through her subconscious Armenia. It is not an Armenia based in a reality, but one which appears like the mythical city of Shangri La when one closes one's eyes. Rooted in what Jung may call a "communal consciousness," her Armenia appears on film as a collage of myth, legend, experience and immigration. (CFMDC)

CARIBOU IN THE ARCHIVE
Jennifer Dysart | 2007 | sound | digital | 8 minutes

In Caribou in the Archive, rustic VHS home video of a Cree woman hunting caribou in the 1990s is combined with NFB archival film footage of northern Manitoba from the 1950s. In this experimental film, the difference between homemade video and official historical record is considered. Northern Indigenous women hunting is at the heart of this personal found footage film in which the filmmaker describes the enigmatic events that led to saving an important piece of family history from being lost forever. (J.D)

BLACK RECTANGLE
Rhayne Vermette | 2014 | sound | digital | 2 minutes

“Time has not been kind to Kasimir Malevich’s painting, Black Square. In 1915 when the work was first displayed the surface of the square was pristine and pure; now the black paint has cracked revealing the white ground like mortar in crazy paving.”

This film documents a tedious process of dismantling and reassembling 16 mm found footage. The film collage imitates functions of a curtain, while the recorded optical track describes the flm’s subsequent destruction during its first projection. (R.V.)

PLEIN AIR ETUDE
Richard Kerr | 1991 | silent | 16mm | 5 minutes

An ecstatic, kinetic formal study of light, colour, and movement shot in the region of the Montreal River which so inspired members of the Group of Seven. (R.K.)

98.3 KHz: BRIDGE AT ELECTRICAL STORM
Al Razutis | 1973 | sound | 16mm | 11 minutes

A repeating journey across the San Francisco Bay Bridge becomes a journey into disintegrating visuals, video transformation, with an accompanying sound track taken from "40 years of Radio". As a film, it anticipated the end of the film medium, and the emergence of the video medium.

The basis for this work is motion picture (photo-chemical) film subject to a transformation to electronic forms while engaged in chemical self-destruction. (A.R.)

MOSAIC
Christine Lucy Latimer | 2002 | silent | 16mm | 3 minutes

VHS footage of a digitally scrambled cable TV kickboxing fight is transferred to 16mm B & W film negative and printed by hand. Digital interference foregrounds and destroys the representational action, creating a rhythmic, abstract tonal landscape.

A hybrid project created with vhs video and 16mm film. (C.L.L)

VERY NICE, VERY NICE
Arthur Lipsett | 1961 | sound | 16mm | 7 minutes

Through an unconventional use of concise narrative, a conceptual collage of sounds and images, and a rapid-fire montage, Arthur Lipsett's first film vividly portrays the urban estrangement in the times of social erosion and materialism. (NFB)

This program is supported in part by the London Arts Council through the City of London’s Community Arts Investment Program.