“Far From”. October 14, 2014

: 32/76 An W+B by Kurt Kren

: Far From by Barbara Sternberg

: The Everden by Clint Enns

Far From

“But because truly being here is so much; because everything here Apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way Keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, The Ninth Elegy

Far From, the most recent film from veteran Canadian experimental filmmaker Barbara Sternberg, is a beautifully layered reflection on the weight of place and time on our experience of life. Using footage accumulated from a life with a camera, superimposed with photographs of family and rotoscoped animations, Sternberg draws us through what she calls “the density and noise of existence.”

Sternberg’s film is paired with two younger artists’ reflections on the significance of place. Clint Enns’ The Everden uses the decayed video format of the Fisher-Price PixelVision camera— a 1980s-era toy camera that recorded onto audio cassette tapes—to turn his first impressions of Toronto into a glitched technological phantom. Alexandra Cuesta’s Despedida (Farewell) bids goodbye to a neighbourhood the filmmaker spent a few years in during her time in Los Angeles before relocating back to Ecuador, pairing footage of neighbourhood activity with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku.

The programme is bracketed by two films by the influential Austrian filmmaker, Kurt Kren, who used extended shooting periods and visual layers to encapsulate time’s passage. In 32/76 An W + B, dedicated to underground filmmakers Wilhem and Birgit Hein, Kren racks focus between a neighbourhood park and a large-format negative shot from the same vantage, creating a frozen ghost image over the live moment; 37/78 Tree Again features a pastoral scene that Kren shot daily over the course of a summer and fall, using an outdated infra-red film stock.

Clint Enns and Barbara Sternberg in person.

Tuesday, October 14 6:30pm .

Chris Kennedy

“Far From”. October 14, 2014