Since World War II, residents of Sackville, New Brunswick heard voices in their sinks, refrigerators, and radiator pipes. Lights glowed on and off at random, and even transmitted thoughts into their minds, causing one spooked soul to dream in languages that he was unable to speak. For anyone unaware of their source, these broadcasts from beyond could sound supernatural. The foreign tongues filtering into the east coast Canadian town with a population of less than 6,000, were actually due to shortwave transmissions, unintentionally picked up from 13 radio towers located in the saltwater Tantramar Marshes built by the CBC in 1944.
Moncton-born experimental artist and filmmaker Amanda Dawn Christie spent seven years exploring this otherworldly phenomenon culminating in her film Spectres of Shortwave.
This screening of the film is accompanied by a radio simulcast, so that while viewers watch the film on a big screen in one part of the world, listeners can hear the sound track over radio waves in another part of the world. This experimental documentary film focuses on the flat marshland landscape accompanied by stories told by local residents and the technicians who worked at the site.
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.
She has been an artist in residence at the Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative (Halifax), the Wave Farm (Acra, New York), the Millennium Film Workshop (New York, New York), MDocs Storyteller’s Institute (Saratoga Springs, New York).
* Best Documentary Film (international competition) 2016 / FICFA
Official Selection:
Atlantic Film Festival – Halifax, Canada
Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie – Moncton, Canada
Co-presented by send+receive: a festival of sound.
Source:: https://www.winnipegfilmgroup.com/event/spectres-of-shortwave/