DIM Cinema Presents
Alex Mackenzie, The Wooden Lightbox: a secret art of seeing
Monday October 18 2010 7:30pm
at the Pacific Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St. Vancouver
10.50$/Students 9.00$ + 3$membership
www.dimcinema.ca  www.cinematheque.bc.ca

* NO LATECOMERS WILL BE ADMITTED TO THIS PERFORMANCE. THE SHOW STARTS PROMPTLY AT 7:30PM

The Wooden Lightbox: a secret art of seeing is an exploration and reconfiguration of cinematic apparatus and emulsion. Using the early development of cinema as a marker for cultural, technological and economic change, these film cycles draw from turn of the century cinematic prototypes and long forgotten ideas surrounding the moving image and its early promise. At the core of this approach is the use of a homebuilt hand-cranked projector in an expanded cinema format to present a striking array of handmade and processed emulsion. The vast potential of the film frame is drawn out through imagery both archaic and contemporary in shape and form. Hypnosis, panorama, motion studies, expectation, magic, the dream world and sleight of eye conspire in this intimate and immersive framework.

 “...[Mackenzie’s] work often has an otherworldly quality, as if we were seeing images for the first time...his process allows for the re-entry of a sense of wonder, what theorist Walter Benjamin once referred to as the promesse de bonheur, or the utopian promise of technology that can only be reproduced through an artistic reinvestment in the hidden possibilities of a medium. Through his rediscoveries, MacKenzie takes us back to the birth of the moving image...”  -Chris Kennedy, Strategies of the Medium III: In the Dark, Toronto (LIFT/Pleasuredome).
 

http://www.alexmackenzie.ca/