ReFrame Summer Series

Mining (And Manipulating) The Home Movie - Canadian Images in Conversation Screening

Expired October 24, 2021 3:45 AM
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Mining (And Manipulating) The Home Movie

Curated by Madison More


**10AM Sunday October 17: Please note, we have updated Lindsay McIntyre's film Her Silent Life. The film made available on Saturday October 16 was incomplete. Thanks to Lindsay McIntyre for your patience and assistance in getting this sorted.


Live Panel Discussion: October 16 at 7pm


Several of the experimental filmmakers whose work is in this program discuss the idealistic nature of home movies and how their work addresses issues of memory and decay.


Panelists include: Lindsay McIntyre, Philip Hoffman, Eva Kolcze, Sara Angelucci, Amanda Dawn Christie, Louise Bourque and John Kneller.


Screening Dates: October 16 - October 23


Program Description:


An often untapped source of historical evidence, home movies (and other types of orphaned film) offer a snapshot of Canadian life not recorded in mainstream histories of our country. While they can help people discover and remember our collective history, some historians and culture theorists have criticized their use as historical evidence, citing that they tend to idealize the past through what was filmed, how it was filmed, and who was filming. Containing personal and found home movies, as well as other types of source material, the films in this program reflect on the complexities of home movies and the realities they depict through the ways they incorporate and manipulate their source material. Emphasizing themes of memory and decay, the films raise questions about how our collective history should be remembered. Who gets to tell our stories? How should those stories be told? How can we begin documenting the past in a way that is reflective of different cultural groups? 


Film List:


Christina Battle, nostalgia (April 2001to present), 2005, 4 min, 16mm

Critiques our idealistic view of the past by distorting images and sound.


Eva Kolcze and Philip Hoffman, By The Time We Got To Expo, 9 min, Digital

Re-visits Expo 67 by manipulating footage from the event with different photochemical processes.


John Kneller, Separation, 2008, 6:30 min, 16mm

Separates the different colours of the film emulsion of home movies, drawing attention to the layered materiality of the film strip.


Amanda Dawn Christie, Mechanical Memory, 2005, 5 min, 16mm

Explores the decay of memory and the filmstrip using super 8mm footage taken by the filmmaker’s father.


Sara Angelucci, Snow, 2000, 5 minutes, digital

Uses the final fragments of home movies to create a series of “endings,” each one being obliterated by the white dots that appear at the end of each filmstrip.


Freda Guttman, Film Muet / Silent Movie, 1994, 9:20 min, digital

Experiments with 8mm home movie footage of the filmmaker to explore how familial roles are represented in the space of the home movie.


Louise Bourque, Imprint, 1997, 14 min, 16mm

Alters home movie footage of the filmmaker’s family home through tinting, bleaching, and other experimental practices.


Lindsay McIntyre, her silent life, 2011, 31 min, digital

Uses filmed images and audio interviews to explore the life of the filmmaker’s Inuk great-grandmother.



Filmmaker Bios:


Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist whose works are often processed-based, involve documentary and experimental techniques, and she even makes her own 16mm film with handmade silver gelatin emulsion. She applies her interest in film chemistry, analog technologies, and structure to make award-winning short 16mm films and expanded cinema performances.


Freda Guttman was born in Montreal where she continues to live and work. In more than fifty-five years of active research and practice, Freda Guttman's work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Her work is part of numerous private and public collections and she has received many grants and awards. 


A film artist of memory and association, Philip Hoffman has long been recognized as Canada's pre-eminent diary filmmaker. As a contemporary filmmaker, Hoffman works with themes of death, diaspora, memory, and transcendence.


Eva Kolcze is a Toronto-based artist who creates films and installations that investigate themes of landscape, architecture, and the body. She currently teaches filmmaking at Humber College. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University and a Master of Fine Arts from York University.


Christina Battle's (Edmonton, Canada) research and artistic work consider the parameters of disaster; looking to it as action, as more than mere event and instead as a framework operating within larger systems of power. She has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries.


Sara Angelucci is a photo and video artist born in Hamilton, Ontario and currently living in Toronto. She completed her B.A. at the University of Guelph and her M.F.A. at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has exhibited her photography across Canada including exhibitions at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal, Vu in Quebec City, the Toronto Photographer's Workshop, the MacLaren Art Centre, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Richmond Art Gallery, and the St. Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax. 


Since 1999 Amanda Dawn Christie has created dozens of experimental films, videos, expanded cinema performances, and installations that have been presented around the world. She works with 35mm, 16mm, and super 8 film as well as analogue video, digital media, photography, installation art, sound art, electronics, and performance. Her work not only spans across these mediums but also brings them together in ways that blur the boundaries of where one discipline ends and the next begins.


Louise Bourque is an Acadian French Canadian filmmaker who recently relocated to Montreal after 25 years of absence, twenty of which were spent in the United-States where she made films and taught cinema. Over the years, her films have been screened in some fifty countries across five continents. Bourque has received numerous awards and honors for her work and she has been the recipient of many prestigious grants.


Born in Geneva, Switzerland, John Kneller grew up in Hudson, Quebec, and moved to Toronto in 1985. He attended the University of Toronto, where he earned a BA in Cinema Studies. Meanwhile, small experimental films began to emerge, evolve, and change over time. His more recent work with optical printing, multi-layering, and matting techniques has gained critical attention both locally and abroad. 


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Canadian Images in Conversation is a new collective that is inspired by the legacy of the Canadian Images Film Festival, which took place in Peterborough between 1978-1984. With support from the ReFrame Film Festival and Trent University, CIIC aims to showcase Canadian films and filmmakers through regular screenings and artist talks.


https://www.facebook.com/canadianimagesinconversation


    • Director
      Louise Bourque