WINTER LIGHT PROGRAM:
• 1. rec01
(Collin Olan, 2001, audio recording, 17:10 minutes, looped)
“Brooklyn-based artist Collin Olan offers a dynamite audio piece, which
records the melting of a 10-by-10-inch block of ice. As I strapped on
the headphones, I was half expecting the deafening silence of a John Cage
composition, but found instead a hypnotically compelling 17-minute piece
of richly layered audio. Olan's piece is like music, with rising and falling
choruses of trickles and gurgles serendipitously orchestrated by the laws
of nature." - Katherine Rushworth, Syracuse Post Standard
BIO: Collin Olan lives
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
• 2. Grid Panic
(Michael Bell-Smith, 2006, video, silent, 2 minute loop)
"Michael Bell-Smith operates in the gap between animated cartoons
and painting with unusual effectiveness. His short digital loops, shown
on small screens or painting-like wall monitors, portray landscapes, figures
and oblique social commentary. But their main concerns are color, space
and light, tweaked and amplified by digital technology and restrained
animation… Mr. Bell-Smith brings new and old and static and mobile into
a promising, visually enthralling alignment.” - Roberta Smith, New
York Times
BIO: Michael
Bell-Smith (East Corinth, ME, 1978) alters and reconfigures both lo-fi
imagery and complex animation into computer-based digital loops. His videos
collect an array of landscapes and horizons taken from video games: idyllic
forests, deserts, castles, skylines and oceans. Based in Philadelphia,
Bell-Smith has been featured in The New York Times , Time
Out New York , Rhizome.org and Artnet.
• 3. Crystals
(Peter Lipskis, 1985, 16mm, 4 minutes)
A cinematic tribute to William Bentley, a Vermont dairy farmer who pioneered
the art of snowflake photography for 46 winters (1885-1931), proving that
no two of his 5381 specimens were identical. This film contains about
1500 examples (fewer than the average snowball), showing the incredible
variation of design in nature, while producing the effect of an “organic”
hexagonal mandala in a state of continual metamorphosis.
BIO: “Peter Lipskis is the mad hobbyist of the Canadian
fringe. Fast cars, teen flicks and early colour processes have all shuddered
past his wandering attention. He has worked for two decades, producing
21 short films and a handful of videos… Taken as a whole, his oeuvre displays
frank contradictions and shifts in interest, alongside enormous thematic
and qualitative differences.” - Michael Hoolboom, Fringe
Film in Canada
• 4. Birds
at Sunrise (Joyce Wieland, 1985, 16mm, 10 minutes)
“The film was originally photographed in 1972. Birds from my window were
filmed during the winter, through to the spring, with the early morning
light. I became caught up in their frozen world and their ability to survive
the bitter cold. I welcomed their chirps and their songs which offered
life and hope for spring. In 1984 I was part of a cultural exchange between
Canada and Israel. During my visit my unfinished movie came to mind. A
connection was established in my mind so that the suffering of the birds
became, in a sense, symbolic of the Jews and their survival through suffering.
The film begins with the reading in Hebrew of the 23rd Psalm. This lays
the spiritual ground to the film. I dedicate this film to Ayala."
- JW
BIO: Joyce Wieland (1931-1998)
is regarded as Canada's foremost female artist. She produced an acclaimed
body of work in a great variety of media, from drawing and painting to
quilts and film. She gained a unique respect for incorporating strong
personal statements in her work about issues of feminism, nationalism
and ecology long before it had become fashionable to do so.
• 5. Fire
#3 (John Price, 2003, 16mm hand-processed, silent, 3 minutes)
A hand-processed silent film created on a bitterly cruel winter evening.
In a freezing bathroom with a single candle and a roll of very old 3 A.S.A.
print stock - it became through the alchemy of light, silver and colour
chemistry - a hazy, abstract prayer to the warmth of the sun.
BIO: John Price is an independent filmmaker who has produced experimental
documentaries, dance and diary films since 1986. His love of photography
led to extensive alchemical experimentation with a wide range of motion
picture film emulsions and formats. By shooting on outdated stock or with
printing films not designed for cinematography and processing the footage
by hand, he achieves textures that wouldn't be possible through commercial
labs.
• 6. Colonel Canuck (Jake Kennedy, 2003, video, 2.5 minutes)
Colonel Canuck is a screen-capture video of a “dialogue-event” in an online environment called Habbo Hotel. Colonel Canuck, the protagonist, is an avatar and, indeed, exemplar of maple-syrup-like Canadian-ness. The video shows the Colonel entering a room in Habbo and then proceeding to riff (aloud) on all things Red Leaf Nation. Many of the Colonel's references are lost, however, on his unfortunate, Euro-set listeners.
BIO: Jake Kennedy was born in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, in 1972. He currently lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, where he writes poems and prose works, makes videos, and teaches in the English Department at Okanagan College.
• 7. Burn Your House Down (excerpt) (Paper Rad / Wolf Eyes, 2001/2004, video, 1 minute)
Paper Rad's canine tribute to Wolf Eyes' “Burn Your House Down” begins with a snow-covered extraction from “Future Upper Peninsula / Lower Canada, 2003 euro BC.”
BIO: Paper Rad is a Pittsburgh, PA / Northampton, MA art collective that makes comics, zines, video art, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and are in a variety of bands. The three primary members are Jessica Ciocci, her brother Jacob Ciocci, and their friend Ben Jones.
Wolf Eyes are a noise band from Ann Arbor, MI. Drawing from such disparate sources as Throbbing Gristle, Black Flag, and King Tubby, the trio create harsh and hypnotic electronic landscapes that merge the frenzied energy of hardcore with the nihilistic menace of early industrial and noise.
• 8. Qulliq
(Oil Lamp) (Arnait Women's Video Workshop, 1992, video, 12 minutes)
Members of Arnait Ikkajurtigiit utilize the “new” technology of video
to joyfully re-enact an older technology: the ritual of Qulliq or lighting
of the seal oil lamp. They tell the story in song.
BIO: Arnait Video Productions (Women's Video Workshop) has been producing
video since 1991. It is a collective of Inuit women from Igloolik who
express their values and views through a medium that allow them to share
their stories with their community and with a larger audience.
• 9. 31/75
Asyl (Asylum) (Kurt Kren, 1975, 16mm, silent, 8 minutes)
Recorded over the space of 21 days by selectively masking and exposing
the same three rolls of film, the transformations of a landscape are simultaneously
recorded in a static image. “Since the weather was changing throughout
the time of shooting (March/April) the brightness of the picture is very
different from take to take. Sometimes snow is seen on the ground… The
exchange of the masks does create movement, but not as a course of time
towards a goal.” - Birgit Hein
BIO: Called the 'father of postwar European avant-garde cinema,' Austrian
filmmaker Kurt Kren (1929-1998) was a leading practitioner of structural
film. Gary Morris also points out Kren's “films predate and predict many
of the strategies of present-day radical art. In one aspect of his career
- documenting the work of some of his wilder associates in the Austrian
avant-garde - he arguably helped prepare us for groups like Survival Research
Laboratories, body outlaws, and modern primitives - gay, straight, and
all other variants.”
• 10. Black Ice
(Stan Brakhage, 1994, 16mm, silent, 2.5 minutes)
"I lost sight due to a blow on the head from slipping on black ice
(leading to eye surgery, eventually); and now (because of artificially
thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter are made in frightful
awareness of black ice.” - SB
BIO: Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) was possibly the most important filmmaker
of the avant-garde, and one of the greatest artists of our time. From
1952, at the age of 19, until his death, Brakhage created more than 400
films, ranging in length from several seconds to several hours, constantly
and consistently redefining cinematic art.
• 11. Odilon
Redon (Guy Maddin, 1995, 16mm, b&w, 5 minutes)
A startling five-minute tour de force inspired by the work of the eponymous
symbolist painter and set on a steam train hurtling across a surreal winter
landscape.
BIO: Guy Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg. He
then worked as a bank teller and house painter before settling upon a
career as a filmmaker. Since 1985, Maddin has made five highly personal
features, including Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), Careful
(1992), and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002),
and approximately 20 short films that have won awards at film festivals
worldwide. His style has been called "cinéma enchanté”
by Village Voice 's Michael Atkinson.
• 12. Kosmos
(Thorsten Fleisch, 2004, 16mm, 5 minutes)
“The mystery of the crystals under closer examination. What is it that
makes them possess magic powers as claimed by mystics of all ages? Through
growing crystals directly on film their mystical qualities shine straight
to the screen. Unfiltered, only aided by light which gracefully breaks
its rays into rich visual textures.” - TF
BIO: Thorsten
Fleisch was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1972. He began experimenting
with Super 8 while in high school where he also exhibited his first film,
a Super 8 loop. After high school and community service in an institution
for the mentally ill he studied art, music and media in Marburg, Germany,
and film with Peter Kubelka in Frankfurt, where he first started working
with 16mm. He currently lives and works in Berlin. |
STILLS,
PREVIEWS, DOWNLOADS:
- Press
Release.
Screening poster.
Collin Olan, rec01 (2001, audio
recording)
- Preview
Michael Bell-Smith, Grid
Panic (2006, video loop)
- Preview
Peter Lipskis, Crystals
(1985, 16mm, 4 min)
Joyce Wieland, Birds
at Sunrise (1985, 16mm, 10 min)
John Price, Fire
#3 (2003, 16mm, 3 min)
 Jake Kennedy, Colonel Canuck (2003, video, 2.5 minutes)
Arnait Video Workshop,
Qulliq (Oil Lamp) (1992, video, 12 min)
Kurt Kren, 31/75
Asyl (Asylum) (1975, 16mm, 8 min)
Guy Maddin, Odilon
Redon (1995, 16mm, 5 min)
Thorsten Fleisch, Kosmos
(2004, 16mm, 5:11 min).
- Preview.
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