“The Trouble with Being Born: Selections from Media City Film Festival”. June 12, 2014
Cinematographie by Philipp Fleischmann
The Trouble with Being Born: Selections from Media City Film Festival
Curated by Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby.
Founded in 1994 by a quintet of artists that included Deirdre Logue and Chris McNamara, the annual Media City Film Festival has grown under the artistic direction of Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby into a vital destination for those concerned with the current state of the avant-garde. Its location in the working-class border town of Windsor, Ontario (just across the river from Detroit) has contributed to its position as a crossroads festival, one particularly interested in providing an internationalist perspective on experimental cinema. Beyond its rigorous programming, each edition has been notable for the number of artists who have travelled to the festival to screen their films (especially impressive during the festival’s first decade, when it took place in the cold winter nights of mid-February), and the passionate and engaged discourse between audiences and artists.
In anticipation of the festival’s twentieth-anniversary edition in the considerably balmier month of July, Mosna and Rigsby bring us a selection of films from their past programs. Designed as both a collection of favourites and a thematic on repetition and seeing anew, this program features work from established artists (Nicky Hamlyn, Henry Hills, Kurt Kren, Guy Sherwin) and those of the generation they have influenced (Philipp Fleischmann, Neil Henderson, Johann Lurf, Rachel Reupke), as well as a film rarely shown in North America (Victor Asliuk’s The Wheel). That few of these names are widely known on the festival circuit speaks to Mosna and Rigsby’s desire to seek out and champion filmmakers who are often overlooked by larger venues, which has made Media City a forum of rare discovery for those willing to make the annual trek down the 401.
Looped on entry:
Risoni dir. Nicky Hamlyn | UK 2004 | indefinite | 16mm bipacked loops
Cinematographie dir. Philipp Fleischmann | Austria 2009 | 6 min. | 16mm
Kino Da! dir. Henry Hills | USA 1981 | 2 min. | 16mm
The Wheel dir. Victor Asliuk | Belarus 2003 | 23 min. | 35mm
Da Capo: Variations on a Train with Anna dir. Guy Sherwin | UK 2000 | 10 min. | 16mm
Silver/Gold Portrait of Evan Parker dir. Neil Henderson | UK 2010 | 12 min. | 16mm on video
Kreis Wr. Neustadt (A to A) dir. Johann Lurf | Austria 2011 | 5 min. | 35mm
26/71 Zeichenfilm – Balzac oder das Auge Gottes dir. Kurt Kren | Austria 1971 | 0.5 min. | 35mm
Land of Cockaigne dir. Rachel Reupke | UK 2007 | 14 min. | video
Approx. total running time: 73 min.
Thursday, June 12 6:30pm