Dividing Roadmaps by Timezones: 10 years of moving pictures 2000-2010
super 8, 16mm, video, and performance
This 10 year retrospective of films was first presented by the Canadian Film Institute as a part of their Café EX screening series at Club Saw in 2009.
The original screening at the CFI included a handmade zine with an essay and drawings by Amanda Dawn Christie.
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Films that have been part of this program include:
(The original program was a collection of films from 1999-2009. In subsequent screenings the selection of films has varried slightly from venue to venue.)
He Drives (super 8 colour, live sound, 3 min, 1999)
Here (super 8, BW, 3 min, 2000)
Turning (16mm, BW, silent, 8 min, 2004)
Forever Hold Your Peace (16mm, colour, hand scratched optical sound, 1 min, 2004)
Playing Jacob (16mm, colour, optical sound, 2 min, 2005)
Knowledge of Good and Evil (16mm, colour, silent, 2 min, 2005)
16mm Postcard(16mm, BW, optical sound, 2 min, 2005)
Mechanical Memory (16mm, BW, optical sound, 6 min, 2005)
3part Harmony: Composition in RGB #1 (16mm, colour, optical sound, 6 min, 2006)
Mechanical / Animal Memory (16mm on DVcam, BW, sound, 6 min, 2006)
This Unnamable Little Dream: or a traced sketch of two brothers (super 8, BW, silent, 3min, 2006)
A Maternal Record Not Fully Recorded (super 8, colour, live sound, 3 min, 2006)
Fallen Flags (16mm, colour, optical sound, 8 min, 2007)
v=d/t (16mm, colour, optical sound, 8 min, 2008)
Circadia (digital video, colour, sound, 5 min, 2009)
A - > B (super 8, BW, sound on CD, 3 min, 2009)
Transmissions (solo performance for two 16mm projectors, loops, optics, shorwave radio and kaoss pad, 15-20 min, 2010)
Lovesongs for Lost Endings (solo performance for super 8 projector and optics with stereo sound, 10 min, 2011)
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Detailed information and links to preview films in this program:
note: most super 8 films have not yet been uploaded - contact Amanda for the password
also note: many of the 16mm video transfers were done by taping off a wall, so some images are soft - these are for preview only.
Turning
Halifax, NS, Canada 2004
9 min. 324 feet (97 metres)
16mm BW handprocessed
silent (no dialogue, no subtitles)
-- originally projected onto a wall of ice as a part of the Quiet Triptych performance --
Throughout the journey, meanings that symbols once held for us shift and change as black and white blend to form grey. We see ourselves reflected in the world around us and the world around us envelops us. Things that were once threatening become comforting arms of solace while things that were once sanctuaries threaten to drown us. Water has the power to cleanse as well as the power to drown while the forest is both protective and foreboding.
Forever Hold Your Peace
Halifax, NS, Canada 2004
1 min.
16mm Color Hand Scratched Sound
Live actions with hand scratched sound, this film presents the frustration of feeling the need to speak with nothing to say. Filmed by the artist's husband at the time, the film also relates to subtle complexities of communication within marriage.
Playing Jacob
Canada 2005
3 min. 100 feet (30 metres) [1 daylight spool]
16mm Color with Optical Sound
Loosely exploring the historical weight of institutionalized religion in a postmillennial society, and its relationship to individual spirituality, the filmmaker places herself into the Jacob myth of the Pentateuch. She plays the role of Jacob in an attempt to come to terms with her religious upbringing, and her anxious ambivalence towards her own agnosticism. Inspired by the in-camera techniques of the early cinema of Meliese, the film and all of its special effects were shot and edited entirely in-camera in one take.
Knowledge of Good and Evil
Vancouver, BC, Canada 2005
1:25 min, 51 feet (15.5 metres)
16mm colour, silent
Knowledge of Good and Evil is an abstract exploration of the tension surrounding women and stereotypical representations of their knowledge. This film was created from footage shot at Phil Hoffman's independent imaging retreat (aka "the film farm") in Ontario as well as from footage shot in Vancouver (where I had given myself the challenge of shooting 100 feet of film every month). All of the footage was hand-processed, and some of it was contact printed by hand and treated in baths of potassium ferricyanide. The final film was created through various optical printing techniques.
16mm Postcard(16mm, BW, optical sound, 2 min, 2005)
Vancouver, BC, Canada 2005
3 min. 100ft (30metres) [1 daylight spool of 3378]
16mm BW with optical sound
A diaristic film in which the filmmaker comes to terms with her new life in Vancouver, "16mm Postcard" is a bittersweet letter back home to the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative in Halifax. Life in any letter, it becomes painfully obvious that one can never fully communicate, and the result is a series of random tidbits that point to a larger experience.
Mechanical Memory
Vancouver, BC, Canada 2006
5 min. 180 feet (54.8 metres)
English, No Subtitles
16mm BW with optical mono sound
Created from super 8 footage that was shot in the 1970s of the family dogs and the trains that my father worked on, this film explores the decay of memory and image. The super 8 film grew fungus while stored in a basement. It was then optically printed up to 16mm and slowed down so that the snowflake shaped fungus could be studied. Narration presents fragmented stories of childhood memories. This film was created as a source film, which was later physically cut up and reprinted with a flashlight to destroy the image and sound for the subsequent film “Mechanical/Animal Memory” which is owned by the NFB.
3part Harmony: Composition in RGB #1
Vancouver, BC, Canada 2006.
6 min., 216 feet (65.8 metres)
16mm color with mono optical sound (no dialogue)
This experimental dance film employs a bastardized version of the 1930s three strip Technicolor process. Shot entirely on black and white film through color filters, the images were recombined into full color through optical printing techniques, one frame at a time. The gestures in this dance work explore the psychological fracturing and reunification in representations of the female body.
A Maternal Record Not Fully Recorded
(super 8, colour, live sound, 3 min, 2006)
A look at our attempts to preserve the past in home movies and photographs, and the disparity between the actual lived events and the mnemonic objects. Super home movies from the 1970s show my mother and myself as a toddler, blowing bubbles and riding horse back. The original super 8 footage was transferred to video, then filmed back onto super 8 from a television monitor in an attempt to translate the memories from medium to medium degenerating and deteriorating with each transfer.
Fallen Flags (16mm, colour, optical sound, 8 min, 2007)
Vancouver, BC, Canada 2007
8:10 min. 294 feet (89.6 metres)
16mm Colour with mono optical sound (no dialogue)
A layered tapestry of trains and underwater footage exploring the realms of fear death and transience, this film places the traces of human voices amidst the flickering light and shadows of empty passenger cars. This film Stems from a train trip from one end of Canada to the other and back again, and the loss of a friend in a drowning accident. This project was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and involved 15 days of train travel from Vancouver to Halifax and back again (1200 km in total). This film is one of the meditations resulting from that trip. A “Fallen Flag” is the railroad term given to a discontinued rail line.
The first minute and the last minute are entirely black with soundscape only.
v=d/t
Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2008
7:36 min. 273 feet (83 metres)
16mm, color with mono optical sound
v=d/t is the physics formula which calculates velocity by dividing the distance traveled by the time required to travel that distance. This film explores the possibility of measuring distances between loved ones through time zones. The sound track is comprised of personal and tragic phone messages left on voicemail when individuals could not connect due to great time zone differences, while the visual elements present simple and contemplative images of antique telephones.
This film was created at the WORM.filmwerkplaats, during a one month artist residency at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam. This handmade film incorporates various contact printing and optical printing techniques in addition to chemical manipulations. This is the first film that I made since Helen Hill passed away, and her influence comes through in my use of text. I have always avoided adding text to my films because I had a real problem with the concept of narrative. After Helen passed away, I watched "Scratch and Crow" over and over again many times over and I was really struck by her use of language both in terms of its content and graphic structure.
Transmissions
solo performance for two 16mm projectors, loops, optics, shorwave radio and kaoss pad, 15-20 min, 2010
An improvisational performance for analogue and digital technologies that explores radio waves and dreaming; satellites and ideas; wireless internet and cell phones; television and radio broadcasts; all of these signals contribute to complex interconnected webs of invisible landscapes and invisible architectures passing through our bodies in every time and in every space. The analogue aspect of the live performance involves the manipulation of 16mm film loops through the use of prisms, mirrors, and lenses, which distort the images while sending them beyond the rectangular perimeter of the screen. The digital aspect of the live performance involves the real time processing of short wave radio sounds through the use of a kaoss pad.
This performance bridges the gap between contemporary digital technologies and anachronistic analogue machines. People often equate interactivity with digital technologies and yet this improvisational performance finds a way to interactively engage with 16mm film loops in real time through the use of glass and mirrors. It ironically presents analogue images of digital devices while simultaneously incorporating digital manipulation of analogue source sounds.
Lovesongs for Lost Endings
solo performance for super 8 projector and optics with stereo sound, 10 min, 2011
The detritus of displacement lingers in the liminal space between the mnemonic device of the home movie and the fleshy body of the operator behind the mechanical projector. In this panegyric for the odds that escape the landfill to linger like fossils for future explorers in the archaeology of junk shops, the body of the projectionist is present in the cinematic space intervening with the flickering images between the lens and the screen; mirrors, prisms, and glass are used to distort and throw the images into deviant spaces like memories disfigured over time through the acts of fact and fabulation. As we move from year to year, place to place, chapter to chapter, we shed our objects like snakes shed their skin and like deer shed their antlers; dead bone to the ground, divining the shed-hunters.