The
Canadian Experimental Scene as it looks to this filmmaker from
Experimental
filmmaking proliferated in
Interest
in the formal, materialist aspects of film, prevalent in the 70's, continues;
for example, Michael Snow's Seated
Figures presents perceptual experiences produced by camera movement, in
this case, tracking and See You Later/Au Revoir was recorded on high- speed 1" video,
slowed down and transferred to film for a seeing only possible by these means.
John Porter adds to his 200 plus collection of short Super 8 man-with-a-camera
dances. Carl Brown is working with dyeing, toning and tinting footage thereby
manipulating the colour and texture of the surface and the image embedded
within it. Optical printing or some form of rephotography
to alter and combine images is in evidence in many filmmakers' work—in this programme, for example, films by Barbara Sternberg,
Anne-Marie Fleming, Annette Mangaard.
In this area, also, some exploration of video, laser, and computer technology
figures in work by Al Razutis and recent films by
Bruce Elder and David Rimmer. Commentary on the media
and re-presentation of media imagery or other selected found footage which
figured strongly in both Rimmer's and Razutis' work finds new expression in the work of
Montreal's Jean-Claude Bustros, for example.
The
trend by many younger filmmakers towards working in smaller formats to escape
high film production costs has encouraged a lot of energetic activity. A strong
direction in this filmmaking practice is an examination of sexuality and sexual
behaviour. Often these films are of the 'rough and
ready' Super 8 mode (Buce La Bruce and Gwendolyn, for
examples) and a lot of this work, by gays and lesbians, is well-supported by
large audiences from these communities. Besides work done in the 'rough and
ready' style that attempts to undermine traditional avant-garde aesthetics,
other smaller format films work in the intersection of the instinctual and the
formal approaches—they use the 'low brow' formats to their advantage to create
complex , carefully constructed, yet playful, works.
Despite
feminism, or, perhaps, because of it, there are still fewer women experimental
filmmakers than men (though the small-format work may prove this wrong). This
may be accounted for since the rise in experimental film in
The
majority of experimental work of the late 70-80's can be seen as a move from an
interest in the medium itself or from commentary on or critique of its uses to
a concern with film as a means of exploring self, identity, memory, place and
differing perceptions of reality. Finding ways to tell our stories, express our
perspectives/perceptions - telling 'stories' that are densely layered or
disjunctive and which question the fictions of the reality we call our lives;
story-telling via repetition and through interruptions; filmmaking that
combines formal or filmic interests with subject and social and political
concerns; presentations whereby the audience position is open, undetermined by
authorial direction/camera. I see also, in recent years, a shift in this work,
or amongst some of it, towards something of the spirititual—an
evocation of or a search for spirit, a hinting at, a brief glimpse or
remembrance of spirit—perhaps a return to light , to the 'perceptual reality'
of Jack Chambers, to vision or the visionary.
So,
experimental film is alive in
(Written
for the catalogue, "The Visual Aspect: Recent Canadn
Experimental Films" 1991, edited by Rose Lowder)