answer print Spring 2011
“Alexandre Larose Artist Talk” photo by Aaron Feser
THE WORLD ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOOKING GLASS Our Quarterly Manifesto Members’ Missives Ville Marie Small Gauge for a Small City
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The Birds & Double Take Indie 3D 300 Tapes CSIF News
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The Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF) April 2011, Vol. 20, #1 J2, 2711 Battleford Ave. SW Calgary, AB T3E 7L4 Telephone: 403-205-4747 E-Mail: operations@csif.org Website: www.csif.org Submissions, or to volunteer for Answer Print: email programming@csif.org Editor: Melanie Wilmink Designer: Melanie Wilmink Copy Editor: Melanie Wilmink Contributors: Jordan Baylon, Ben Hayden, Tammy McGrath, Gillian McKercher, Alex Rogalski, Jenna Shummoogum, Ben Tsui CSIF Board of Directors James Reckseidler (President) Kyle Whitehead (VP) Doreen Wood (Secretary) Keely Bruce (Treasurer) Directors: Luke Black, Barry Leggett, Hernan Moreno, Jamie Wensley CSIF Staff: Bobbie Todd, Operations Coordinator Melanie Wilmink, Programming Coordinator. CSIF is grateful for the involvement of its members, the network of artist-run cooperatives throughout Canada and for the financial assistance of its funders— The Alberta Foundation for the Arts; The Canada Council for the Arts; The National Film Board; Calgary Arts Development, —and from its donors—members and individuals.
Quarterly Manifesto by Tammy McGrath
Calgary is home to an impressive list of independent artists and arts collectives, artistrun centres, galleries, media arts production suites, alternative exhibition spaces and an art college. The city has cultivated some of Canada’s most respected artists and curators and we have recently been acknowledged for having one of Canada’s most important art critics. Art critic Nancy Tousley was recently awarded a 2011 Governor General’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the arts. So why is media arts programming in this city largely ignored in critical art publications, newsprint and weekly local publications? I asked this question a few months ago when I met with a variety of arts administrators from EMMEDIA, CSIF, Truck Gallery, Stride Gallery and Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival to discuss the lack of critical art writing by Calgary arts writ-
ers. A few items we identified as contributing to the general lack of writing about the media arts are: 1. Typically both visual and media arts are underrepresented because Calgary lacks a critical mass of full time writers to fill this niche. In other parts of the country, cities have established critical writing communities who know and support each other. These writers are invited to give workshops, sit on panels and participate in important art events. Cities such as Toronto have a prolific group of critical writers who are published in local and national publications. There is strength in numbers. 2. Many of our Calgary arts writers are also practicing artists which often deter them from writing about specific exhibitions due to perceived or real conflicts of interest. 3. The payment received by critical writers is (for the most part) shockingly low. This de-
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Members’ Missives: A Fairytale by Jordan Baylon
She frolics under a tree in a sunny meadow, her dress checkered red and white. She takes up an accordion and pulls a few sombre notes from it. Interrupted by a dead branch falling behind her, she inspects the sparse foliage: the tree is not faring well. She makes trips to a marsh, filling a bucket to pour over its parched roots. A discordant violin-like shriek piques her attention and she finds herself wandering into a grove full of trees with red felt apples hanging from them. Enchanted, she delights in picking the apples and collecting them in a basket. On her way home she hears the violin sounds again and finally spies the sharks surging momentarily from the sea of long
grass in the meadow. They look relatively innocuous, with long white felt bodies, sharp goggle eyes, and mouths that eagerly seek the apples she tosses to them innocently. Then she notices a tinny tinkle like that of a toy piano as a wolf rides a bicycle back into the grove. His head is white, his eyes black and stern; he is clad in denim overalls and work gloves. Behind his bicycle he tows a little trailer covered with red felt, complete with iridescent streamer flying behind it. … Scenes from a Secret World, lovingly crafted by Calgary ex-pat Amalie Atkins and a selection for this year’s $100 Film Festival, knows that a poignant and memorable
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fairytale is woven from threads of the finest subtlety. It takes things we know and skews them just so, making them at once familiar and fantastic, the tension between these two ideas leading us unknowingly down forest paths seldom trod. Good fairytales are spun from the most dark and macabre subject matter. A champion of Minema Cinema, Atkins creates this mood through the deft manipulation of her soundtrack, which is elegiac and mystical, and her judicious planning of her shots. The animalistic, the primal, and the visceral are combined with a child’s innocence as if trimmed with a delicate lace. The benign and the sinister trade cloaks often in these stories, and the little details are always what fill your youthful imagination and haunt you as you age… … Night falls swiftly as she sneaks into the grove to spy on the wolf. From his trailer he takes a measure of red felt, cuts it into rounded diamond-shaped pieces, and then painstakingly sews them into the same apples the girl had picked. He sets a ladder under a tree, placing an apple on a high rung while he climbs. A shark quickly snatches away the apple, but the wolf is savvy. He places another apple on the rung and feigns to look away-- the shark makes a lunge for the apple but is met by a swift punch from the wolf. Satisfied, the wolf resumes climbing the ladder and begins to hang apples. Then a -6-
giant shark falls upon the wolf, severing head from body with its terrible jaws.The girl witnesses this in alarm, and rushes to the body of the wolf lying lifeless on the ground. She is determined. Donning the wolf’s head, she takes his hedge clippers, stands above the sea of grass using his ladder, and holds an apple tied to a stick. The giant shark cannot resist such a temptation and lunges greedily for the bait.The girl quickly brandishes the clipper, neatly severing the head of the shark. She plucks its eye and hurries back to the wolf, removing his head from her shoulders to sew it back onto his. Finally she entrusts the eye to his gloved hand, which we see close as she returns to her tree. … You’ve seen and heard the hero of this film before but never met her. You’ve followed her in other fairytales because she didn’t seem to belong in your world and yet was, so for you she stood for everything that was possible. She was brave. She would cuddle with your fears, allowing you to project your vulnerabilities on her so she could surpass them. You may be older now, but you still need her. With her understated and effective film, Amalie Atkins takes on that role for us. With a lot of time, love, and felt, she has recrafted an old archetype for a new world. In the end her hero will swallow your darkness and purge it, not because she is privy to secret knowledge, but because her surprise is al-
ways the one you discover you were in on from the start… … The falling of branches has not abated and ever stoic, the girl continues her bucket-filling trek. As she is returning from the marsh, a joyful sight catches her eye: her tree is laden with red felt apples, these larger and fuller than the ones she picked before. Finally able to take up her accordion, she plays a beautiful haunting melody as she dances under the tree.
Epilogue The wolf is in his shed, sharpening his hedge clippers. Stepping out, he places them in one of the pockets that run the length of the red trailer, along with shears and scissors of various kinds, and a few red flowers that he sniffs before mounting his bicycle and riding off, the tinny tinkle of a toy piano trailing behind him… … The End
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Manifesto continued from page 2
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ters many strong writers from taking on critical writing as a full time profession. 4. Opportunity. There are limited Calgary publications for arts writers. The Calgary art community has tried to address this through initiatives such as Shotgun Review and inhouse publications at CSIF, EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts and EMMEDIA. Unfortunately not all of the initiated publications have the resources to pay writers or staff fees and are often produced by volunteers or the centres’ themselves. 5. Media arts administrators and writers have acknowledged that many critical arts writers do not feel qualified to write about sound art, performative art or independent film because they do not have experience
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in this area. How can we overcome these obstacles and create strong discourse around Calgary media arts programming? One way is to cultivate a community to support new and mid-career critical writers. For this reason EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts, Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and EMMEDIA have begun to work towards creating a collective (titled ARTiCAL) of aspiring and published critical writers. We meet with writers once a month for peer review of articles, collectively discuss pitches for publications, provide information about deadlines for publications, and when possible, have speakers attend meetings to discuss various issues and techniques around publishing work about the media arts. Although there is an emphasis on media arts at these meetings, we also encourage visual arts writing. The agenda of the ARTiCAL collective is driven by its participants. The writers discuss what would help them cultivate and publish their writing and the group works towards providing the required support. If you are interested in critical writing, or already writing but looking for a community with which to discuss opportunities and/or your writing, please contact Melanie Wilmink at the Calgary Society of Independent filmmakers at programming@csif.org or Tammy McGrath at EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts at tmcgrath@ epcorcentre.org.
Examinations of “Ville Marie” scopic diagonals distort perception. Partway through the experience you In Ville Marie, experimental film- realize you are not simply floating, maker Alexander Larose drops you but falling. You see the face of Larose from a rooftop hundreds of times, and as you come toward his outstretched you feel it. You are a super 8 camera arms. Larose catches you, and lets falling off a building. You fly back up, you go again. Color differentiation and down again, hundreds of times, punctuates each interval of falling. each time differently. Larose is faith- The building that the super 8 camful to generative optical film printing era falls alongside becomes distorted techniques that expand a ten-second through dense textures. Larose overexperience to be twelve existential lays multiple captures and modifies minutes. dozens of re-captures from the origiVille Marie is concerned with the nal negative until the viewer experiperception and sight. Vague kaleido- ences approximately seventy-six simultaneous drops from the rooftop. When the sequence flashes yellow and green, the viewer actually experiences the return to - and falling from - the “edge of oblivion” through the careful editing structure that paralells the first first section. The film also highlights the sensation of sound along with this imagery. Throughout the passage in consideration, the ambient soundtrack becomes tonal and drifting, sonically encompassing the viewer as they fall from the “edge of oblivion”. The music re-enforces the parallel editing sensation because Larose incorporates two distinct passages of distorted speech that have similarity in the style of speech, but are sonically varied so as to establish comparable dichotomies between image and sound. by Benjamin Ross Hayden
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Still from “Ville Marie” by Alexandre Larose
Ville Marie is also concerned with existentialism. Larose suspends the viewer in limbo by repeatedly releasing the camera from the “edge of oblivion”. This places the viewer in the point-of-view of an entity released from the physical world, while simultaneously being brought back to life. Larose raises questions through this about the conscious awareness in and of grounded reality. Larose simultaneously creates you while he destroys you. Techniques in Ville Marie are multiplication and duplication light photon particles captured from one piece of film onto hundreds of additional pieces of film. Since the “edge of oblivion” sequence plays in forward and reverse order, Larose is taking the viewer through a unique tunnel
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of photon-capture every time he rephotographs the journey of falling, via optical printing technique. The optical printer machine projects images from one piece of film across a distance to another piece of film. By way of technical processes, Larose is making the viewer take the journey across an optical beam of light. Alexandre Larose was the visiting artist at the 19th Annual $100 Film Festival by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and held a retrospective screening and artist talk about his work on Friday March 4, 2011. For more information about the screening and his work: www.100dollarfilmfestival.org
Small Gauge for a Small City. by Alex Rogalski
It’s 7:50pm and the auto thread release on the 30-year-old Elmo ST1200 is sticking; I’ve just replaced the bulb and don’t have another back up. Fingers crossed it lasts the night. Three filmmakers just arrived with their soundtracks on three different formats (clearly forgetting the deadline for delivery was 2 days prior), and one is wondering if I can switch the projector to 24 frames per second for their film (again, someone didn’t read the entry form). There are only four empty seats left in the theatre and at least 15 people waiting in the lobby. Time for some diplomacy, but first I take a deep breath and realize this is part of the excitement and fully appreciate that people still show up and take part in this event ten years after it started. It’s clear there is something far less tactile and stressful about popping a DVD with 25 films into a laptop and sitting back for the next 2 hours without fretting that the bulb will pop or the take up reel belt will bust. It’s equally clear that would be far less exciting and rewarding. Back in 2000, when the first One Take Super 8 Event was held in Regina, super 8 was already nostalgic and filmmakers had fully committed to the digital age (but had no idea that cell phones could one day shoot video, or that YouTube would exist). But 20
filmmakers signed up and shot a single fifty-foot reel of super 8, agreeing that they couldn’t edit or even see the film, until it screened for an audience at The Antechamber (a novel, but sadly short lived downtown gallery/ cinematheque that I had been a partner in). The bigger surprise for that first event was that The Antechamber was packed far beyond fire code with many people who had never been to a film screening before, let alone one where they didn’t know a thing about the films. It felt like I had discovered a cure against the hesitant or dismissive responses experimental film screenings encounter. This was an opportunity to introduce audiences to the things I found most exciting about filmmaking, and keep the event clear from competition, cynicism, and elitism. You didn’t have to understand what the films were about, or justify why one was better/worse than the others. It was really just about seeing something familiar on screen. A place you recognized, a friend who acted in their first movie, a chance to try filmmaking yourself and actually have an audience watch your film. What has transpired since that first event was beyond my wildest expectations. Over 30 OTS8 events across North America, producing over 700 new super 8 films that have garnered awards internationally.
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It’s 10:30 p.m. The last reel is rewound, the projector survived and is cooling down before getting packed into the road case awaiting its next show (in Winnipeg, three days later). The lobby is filled with chatter, filmmakers mingling and inquiring about what cameras they used, what worked or didn’t, and anecdotes that make these 50 foot films seem like full scale productions. The crowd migrates outside the Regina Public Library Film Theatre and through the crisp fall night air of Victoria Park to O’Hanlon’s Pub, continuing the super 8 conversation over a pint or
two. Shortly, I’ll join them and share how fitting it is that the space once occupied by The Antechamber is now home to the pub we’re sitting in. Seems like we’ve come full circle (or more appropriately, maybe a figure 8 ;) Join the One Take Super 8 Event group on Facebook and follow our blog at - http://onetakesuper8event.blogspot.com/
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Double-Check your Dates for a Double by Gillian McKercher
Reputed for his flair for suspense and technical precision, Alfred Hitchcock established a cinematic influence that continues to inspire and entertain. While some films have modernized Hitchcock’s canon with varying degrees of success, Johan Grimoprez’s Double Take transcends the comfort of recycled stories to explore the social climate surrounding Hitchcock’s The Birds with astute and oftentimes humorous results. Double Take’s sociopolitical messages are especially emphasized with the careful insertion of scenes from The Birds, whether they be Tippi Henderson wiping blood off her face or a tornado of birds swirling in a living room. To enhance the viewer’s experience of both of these films, CSIF and Cinematheque will present a double feature of Hitchcock’s The Birds and Grimoprez’s Double Take May 19th at the Plaza theatre. Both films offer a juxtaposition of realism and absurdity that will entertain and inform both the avid cinephile and casual moviegoer. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds displays the director’s appeal for the bizarre and absurd with a technical wizardry that seems modern in its execution. Loosely based on a collection of stories by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds features an unexplained and violent avian attack in Bodega Bay,
California. Despite the film’s implausibility, Hitchcock’s penchant for unconventional tales enables him to create empathetic and believable situations. Even though Hitchcock likened his movies to “a slice of cake”, his films are not without insightful meaning. The Birds, for example, uses glass – whether it be in the form of a window or a tea-set - to represent the constrained, yet temperamental nature of social order. Furthermore, the title characters of The Birds represent the potential chaos that surrounds our illusion of a controlled and manageable world. Considering that the film was produced in 1963 during the Cold War, a viewer may wonder whether The Birds implicitly noted the fear of the unexpected that was so active in America. While musings on the many meanings of the film may entertain viewers long after they have left the theatre, the film remains an excellent example of classic Hitchcock style. Unlike Hitchcock, whose films are not focused on sociopolitical didacticism, Johan Grimoprez uses Double Take to explore the role, context and influence of the media on the public. Despite the seriousness of Double Take’s theme, the film is entertaining, witty and compulsively watchable, which is more than can be said about other films influenced by The Birds such as Birdemic (James
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Feature of Double the Trouble the skies is comparable to a 60’s news clip of UFOs attacking an urban center. Furthermore, Grimoprez uses doppelgangers as a constant motif throughout his film to draw attention to comparable situations. The most still from “Double Take” obvious of GriNguyen, 2008). Ultimately, Double moprez’s chosen doppelgangers is Take can be enjoyed at face-value as an Alfred Hitchcock and his modern eclectic piece of film or as an instruc- day impersonators; despite Alfred tive comment on the manipulation of Hitchcock being the director’s given name, it was also the title of a charmedia. Double Take’s simple premise is de- acter that is familiar with the public ceptive; Alfred Hitchcock meets his and is emulated by impersonators. doppelganger on the set of The Birds Another notable doppelganger is the and both intend to murder one oth- Cold War and America’s current war er. Ranging from 1957-1963, Double on terrorism. This doppelganger is Take extends its focus to the Cold alluded to at the beginning of Double War frenzy that gripped the United Take when a news station reports that States. Grimoprez was clever to use a plane has crashed into the Empire Hitchcock as a mirror for that period State Building. Grimoprez’s arguof history, for as one reviewer notes, ments are well-formed and interest“what was the Cold War if not one ing, and it is clever that he presents long, painful MacGuffin?”. Double Take his beliefs in the similarly manipualso notes the rise of television and its lated medium of film. CSIF and Cinematheque’s importance to social climate. Carefully chosen excerpts from The Birds, double feature of Hitchcock’s The for example, highlight the absurd Birds and Grimoprez’s Double Take on fervor of the Cold War portrayed on May 19th at the Plaza theatre will be television; a scene of birds swarming an entertaining spectacle of strange - 17 -and shocking images.
Indie 3D Comin’ @ Ya! by Ben Tsui
With the recent advent of digital 3D HD technology, now is the time for independent filmmakers to explore the many possibilities offered in the third dimension! Gone were the days of cumbersome hardware, equipment and complicated editing process. Today, you can even shoot and edit a small scale 3D production for as little as a few hundred dollars. Three dimensional arts is also known as stereoscopic imaging. The interest for this aesthetic began around 1833. It was not until the invention of the twin lens cameras during the1850’s that excited the masses. Many photos depicting ordinary scenery and the American Civil War remained the most popular subjects to date. Originally, this concept was applied using drawings or photographs depicting special spatial representations by combing two almost-identical images shot side by side to create a unique perspective. 3D photography imitates the way our human eyes view objects in real life. Then our sightlines converge to one specific optical point. After the development 35 mm and slide film stocks, as well as interchangeable twin stereo lenses, stereography became the rage once again during the beginning of the 1920’s. By early
1950’s, stereo imaging also debuted using motion pictures. Within the last couple of years, digital 3D television technology has matured to tantalize new optical adventures. The World of 3D imaging now leaps out at us using a diverse array of technical know how’s. Even stereo enthusiasts and budding amateur filmmakers can produce something that is worthwhile and exciting. The three most common stereo viewing techniques are passive 3D, active 3D and the latest addition ~ Lenticular virtual 3D for wall hangings, the iPads and advanced gaming systems. Some don’t even require 3D glasses for watching. Passive viewing is by using any glasses that do not require a power source to view the content. The two most common ones are the red and blue analyph and standard polarized glasses. Active viewing requires additional shutter viewing sources and power. Also, it may cost you up to $150 dollars per active 3D glasses. SNAP 3D (www. snap3d.com) is the first and only lenticular post production house at the moment in North America. This digital technology is still too new for its wide acceptance until it streamlines later next year.
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For independent producers and budding filmmakers, you can now purchase a simple basic 3D HD shooting snap shot camcorder for under $500 dollars. Simple post production software is also included with these cameras. Don’t expect you can do too much photo manipulation with this provided firm ware. However, if you really want to achieve more advanced 3D editing processes, you can either buy 3D software called Roxio’s ‘CREATOR 2011’ (http://roxiocentral. roxio.com/enu/offers/emc/suite/3D.html) for under $100 dollars at any local electronic outlets. For advanced editors, there are also Apple’s ‘FINAL CUT PRO 7’ (http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro) and several free trail wares online. If you shoot side by side videos with 2 camcorders simultaneously staged, you can also upload the videos to YOUTUBE with minimal efforts. You can learn more about this post production process on their website (http://www.google.com/support/youtube/ bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157640) Some of you may consider 3D post production just a gimmick in vogue now but why not try something new and vivid with the audience experience in mind?
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Creating a narrative: one tape at a time by Jenna Shummoogum
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“I got really interested in the idea of using tape and putting this into a material, and thinking about memory and its material attributes,” she says. “I thought we would use tapes because it’s nostalgic, and you can still see what’s going on, as opposed to digital media, where the workings are hidden in a black box.” The archived recordings were put on magnetic tapes. Three hundred of them. The team then experimented with these archives. “I worked with the performers to try and work out a kind of sonic choreography,” Friz explains, “ creating sonic situations whereby their actions on stage or their actions on the tapes, would replicate certain kinds of sonic ideas, like reverberation delay or generation decay.” The team would have the performers put on headphones and instantaneously
In the intimate darkness of a small theatre, three performers activate their tape players and recite the stories that they had previously recorded. 300 TAPES is a performance in experimentation encompassing sound design, narrative, and choreography -but it didn’t start that way. The research for 300 TAPES began two years ago, when dance choreographer Ame Henderson and playwright Bobby Theodore came together to explore the meaning of narrative and its multiple forms of expression in a performance context. “We wanted to explore the relationship between movement and text,” explains Henderson. “We wanted to find a way that those two elements would be in an oppositional relationship.” Armed with these questions, Henderson and Theodore launched their project and brought in three actors (Joe Cobden, Frank Cox-O’Connell and Brendan Gall) to record some memories of their lives, to start telling their stories. From there, the project grew and sound artist Anna Friz sought a method of archiving the recordings. Photo from ATP’s production of 300 Tapes - 21 -
On the Slate: CSIF News audience,” says Stroich. 300 TAPES may prove to be a challenge to audiences because unlike most performance theatre it doesn’t have a linear storyline, it doesn’t have the elements of a typical story: a beginning, middle and end. But that may very well be the point. “A narrative can be constructed in time and through something emerging in time,” Henderson explains. “It doesn’t have to have a structure that is about dictating a particular meaning.” She argues that a narrative can emerge through audience participation and the definition of narrative is very dependent on the context.What the narrative is saying in 300 Tapes is wholly defined by what the audience is doing in relation to the performance and in relation to their own memories and experiences. Audiences may come away thinking of the materialism of memories and if they are played over and over again how their meaning may change. Or they may think about how everyone takes stories and appropriates them as their own. Either way, 300 TAPES should create ribbons of conversation. 300 TAPES made its debut in Toronto and was featured in Alberta “It’s an interesting challenge, listen- Theatre Projects’ Enbridge playRites ing to their conversation and helping Festival of new Canadian plays. More them mine some of the meaning, and information: www.atplive.com the overall effect of the piece on an recite what they were hearing, using their bodies as playback devices. They also experimented with movement and choreography in the same way, using spontaneous patterns of movement that were recorded on videotape and relearning them. This is where Alberta Theatre Projects and dramaturg Vicki Stroich comes in. She was drawn to 300 TAPES purely because of its sense of experimentation. “I felt that what they were doing and what they were experimenting with, the way we tell stories and listen to stories is inherently theatrical,” she says. “But also the way that the space was being used and how they make people feel like they are in the performance with the actors, was really interesting too.” Taking all of these archives, this combination of stories and movement and recordings, and creating a show, didn’t come without its set of unique challenges. The team has been working on this project for years and all of that work had to be condensed and articulated into a show that could be performed. There was also no script that the actors were following, everything they were using was coming from the archive of tapes.
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CSIF Events
Classic Film Screening – 2nd Tuesday of Every Month 7pm; CSIF SOFA CINEMA – FREE A monthly showcase of 16mm films from our film library. May 10 @ 7pm – curated by Murray Smith; June 14 @ 7pm – curator TBA; July 12 @ 7pm – curator TBA AMAAS Arts Party Calgary - April 28 @ 7pm As a fundraiser for the Spirit of Helen award, AMAAS has partnered with several Calgary centres to throw an Art Party. Network, experience Red Rover (a simultaneous, cross-provincial screening of member works by EMMEDIA, Sask. Filmpool and PAVED Arts Society) and check out a silent auction with items donated by several film festivals and cooperatives. www.amaas.ca for more information. The Birds & Double Take Double Feature – May 19 (7pm & 9:15 @ the Plaza Theatre) The CSIF and Cinematheque are pleased to present a double feature event! Join us for this surreal pairing of unconventional works and experience the thrill of Hitchcock as never before seen! “Double Take” is a Borgean meta-movie that transgresses the lines of fiction and documentary and is perfectly paired with its shadow-film “The Birds”. More info: www.csif.org. Tix $8 per film for CSIF & Cinematheque members! One Shot Hothouse – June (date to be confirmed). Create a film entirely in one camera take! Interested? E-mail production@csif.org AMAAS Conference – June 24-26, 2011 (Hinton, AB). SAVE THE DATE! We are in the midst of planning our 20th Anniversary conference! Two decades ago AMAAS was created in Hinton, AB and we celebrate this milestone by returning to the city to fill it with art, dialogue, networking and parties! www.amaas.ca CSIF AGM – June 27-29. Date to be confirmed. We are currently seeking new board members to help direct and run the society. If you are interested, contact James Reckseidler at reckseidlerfilms@hotmail.com Aboriginal Screenings – Quarterly - dates TBA. CSIF has partnered with the Indigineity Artist Collective Society to present a series of films by indigineous artists.
Failed Film Forum - Quarterly - dates TBA. Join experienced CSIF filmmakers to watch some of their early, less-than-successful works. Filmmakers will be in attendance & will answer questions and run discussion about the lessons learned. ARTiCAL - Meetings on the 3rd Tuesday of every month. 6pm @ at the Epcor Centre. Join a collective of writers to discuss critical writing and increase your own skill through workshops. E-mail programming@csif.org for more information or to RSVP to the next meeting.
Workshops
CSIF Spring workshop Schedule available now! Go to www.csif.org to access it online. CSIF Summer Media Arts Camp - July 2011 Join teens between the ages of 14-17 to learn the art of filmmaking! This two-week, handson course uses experienced instructors to train youths to plan, shoot and edit a short film on 16mm using professional filmmaking equipment. More details TBA. Watch www.csif.org for more details, or contact production@csif.org
Other Events Fairy Tales – May 26 - June 3, 2011 fairytalesfilmfest.com Dreamspeakers - June 1-4, 2011 dreamspeakers.org
Call for Submissions CSIF Member Films – Ongoing deadline. Films by members, completed using CSIF resources. www.csif.org $100 Film Festival – Deadline: Dec 1, 2011 Short films (under 22min), finished on Super 8mm or 16mm film. www.100dollarfilmfestival.org
Grant Deadlines ACDI 2011 – Nov 1, 2011 www.canadacouncil.ca - 23 -
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