9.11.2023, 19:30, Maxx 4
EN UT + KONTEXT TALK
11.11.2023, 22:00, Maxx 3
EN UT
Welcome to the amazing world of the Winnipeg Film Group! A programme to discover how the remote and somewhat dull Canadian city of Winnipeg, home of Guy Maddin, has since the 1970s been a place of innovative, border-crossing, and basically crazy cinema. Across animation, fiction, and documentary, there’s a common experimental touch to the styles of the many directors who started filmmaking with the Winnipeg Film Group, the cradle of a unique cinematic extravaganza.
Primiti Too Taa
Colin Morton/Ed Ackerman / Canada 1986 / 2'45" / colour / English / Exp/Ani
A delightful animated poem made with only a typewriter and simple vocal messages, based on the 1920s sound poem «Ursonate» (Sonata in Primitive Sounds) by the German avant-garde artist Kurt Schwitters. The human voice provides the music while words and syllables dance in this short film, which has won several international awards, including a Bronze Apple from the National Educational Film and Video Festival. The film was a six-week collaboration between filmmaker and artist Ed Ackerman and writer and poet Colin Morton.
The Dead Father
Guy Maddin / Canada 1985 / 24'30" / 16mm / black & white / English / Fic/Exp
A young man, whose father has died, experiences an array of post-mortal brushes with his dead father. This grey comedy takes the dark subject matter and produces humorous results.
The Animated Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Leslie Supnet / Canada 2008 / 1'40" / Beta SP NTSC / colour / English / Ani
An animated tribute to Jeff Krulik and John Heyn's 1986 video documentary classic «Heavy Metal Parking Lot». Remaining faithful to no-budget filmmaking, Supnet reconstructs her favourite scenes using cut-out characters made out of aged paper, glue, and ink.
Late Summer
Ryan Steel / Canada 2022 / 11'11" / colour / English / Fic
A mute loner encounters ambivalent feelings, first loves, and the heartbreak of pre-adolescence at a haunted summer camp.
Springtime in Greenland
John Paizs / Canada 1981 / 24'24" / colour / English / Fic
A lifetime of suburbia in a half hour, «Springtime in Greenland» uses 1950s cinematic conventions to tell a story about the sophomoric inhabitants of a fictional utopia. Meet Nick. He's silent, aloof, and straining against suburban values.
Cattle Call
Matthew Rankin/Mike Maryniuk / Canada 2008 / 3'35" / Beta SP NTSC / colour / Ani/Doc/Exp
«Cattle Call» is a high-speed animated documentary about the art of livestock auctioneering. Using a variety of classic and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, cut-outs, open-exposures, hole-punching, and rubbing letraset directly on the celluloid) filmmakers Maryniuk and Rankin have tried to create images as dazzlingly abstract, absurd, and adrenalizing as the incredible language of auctioneering itself. It is our hope that the film will induce near-bovine levels of dumbfoundedness in all those who gaze upon it.
We’re Talking Vulva
Tracy Traeger/Shawna Dempsey/Lorri Millan / Canada 1990 / 5' / colour / English / Clip
At long last, everything you've always wanted to know about «down there» but were afraid to ask. A tender tale wherein our heroine, Ms. V. soul sisters her way into your heart with the hottest rap this side of the uterus. She sings!!! She dances!!! She's big!!! It's a wear and care manual, it's a delightful tour, it's a rock video.
Dumb Angel
Deco Dawson / Canada 2005 / 9'8" / DCP / colour / no dialogue / Clip/Exp
Equal parts improvisational performance, experimental film, behind-the-scenes documentary, music video, and audio composition, «Dumb Angel» features sensational 17-year old rock drummer Anders Erickson in a strange, acute hyper-reality, where the unfaltering magic of cinema happens right before the camera’s eye.