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A collection of seven video works from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and its Centre for Art Tapes. This programme was screened at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, in December 2008.
They Shoot Us At 85, Megan Weinberg, 2007 (8:00)
“Grannie always said they shoot us all at 85.” A few months before Margaret Anne Wennberg’s 93rd birthday, granddaughter Megan took her up on the offer. A day reflects a lifetime in this wry, honest look at aging.
Day of the Uteri, Mary-Anne Wensley, 2008 (3:47)
The ancient Greeks thought that the uterus was an animal within an animal. It didn’t like to stay in its place. This animation chronicles the escape and adventures of a bunch of uteri.
Slipstream, John Mathews, 2006 (9:00)
This film work was begun in Northern Ireland and finished in Canada and uses the central motif of the flag. Through shadow play the flag is deprived of its charged identity and becomes a stateless and nomadic symbol. The work uses a range of elemental imagery to explore the nature of memory and states of transition. The ways, in which we interact, respond to and construct our environment, are also concerns within the work.
Charles’ Farm, Oren Hercz, 2008 (13:00)
A verbose badass in the backwoods of Nova Scotia, Charles is a king in a self-made kingdom – marginal and determined. Few would imagine Charles’ life could be possible. Charles couldn’t do anything else.
Charlie’s Prospect, Ariella Pahlke, 1997 (10:00)
“An allegorical video fable set to original choral composition and based on a true story told by folk artist Charlie Norris, a neighbour in the small fishing village where I live. Norris has built a replica of the village of Lower Prospect on his front lawn. The story unfolds as a wealthy young family drives by and wants to buy the entire model village. The artist is faced with a dilemma about the value of what he has created and the meaning of community – a dilemma mirrored in the lives of many fishing families in Atlantic Canada’s coastal communities.” — Ariella Pahlke
Temporal Index #1, John Mathews, 2007 (4:00)
An exploration of urban structures and negative spaces in order to provide an insight into shifts within society, collective memory and how we interact with urbanized space.
A Self-conscious Mise-en-scene, Anthony Cristiano, 2007 (25:00)
An unconventional film based on the short story The Millenary Man and recounting the anxieties and fears experience one late summer of the year 2000. The observations made amount to a psychological dilemma transposed to the arts: lives left at the fringes of society – as they were disowned by the community they belong to – which in turn mirror a homelessness of the mind in the artist’s identity.
(Programme notes from the Centre for Art Tapes, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)