Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk
Brad Butler in attendance

UK artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler’s artistic practice challenges and interrogates participation, collaboration, the social turn, and the traditional roles of the artist as producer and the audience as recipient. This investigation currently manifests in The Museum of Non Participation, a cross-cultural artistic intervention and appraisal of standard forms of representing and experiencing the everyday in Karachi and London. The project was conceived in 2007 when Mirza and Butler witnessed the Pakistani Lawyers movement protests and subsequent state violence from a window in The National Art Gallery in Islamabad. 

The Exception and the Rule is Mirza and Butler’s most recent film from this ongoing series. Conscious of their outside perceptions of the city and its geo-political weight, they investigate the everyday patterns of Karachi’s inhabitants and social architecture. In a city with almost no museums, the city itself becomes the museum. Non-participation becomes a form of resistance that critiques agency and consequence of participation/implication, action/inaction, and resistance/pacifism within the constraints of our global economic and political systems.

Their earlier work, Non Places, The Space Between, and The Autonomous Object? provide history and context to Mirza and Butler’s commitment to questioning the objectivity of the cinematic frame and its implications in anthropology, ethnography, and architecture.

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UK Filmmaker and Programmer of the no.w.here media arts centre in London will present an artist talk on his curatorial, pedagogical and social filmmaking practices. At its core, Butler’s practice challenges and interrogates participation, collaboration, the social turn, and the traditional roles of the artist as producer, and the audience as recipient. Over dinner and wine, we hope to introduce Butler to the arts, media, writing and programming community in Vancouver and spark conversation about collaborating with UK and European artists, centres, and projects. 

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Anthropologist Anna Grimshaw said, "Films are not about what you see, but how you see". This cross-media practice based workshop refers to the history of filmmaking to explore the construction of anthropological truth. Drawing on the genre of Experimental Ethnography, participants will consider the ambiguous relationship between image, narration, sound, and text and explore ways of re-contextualizing or disrupting visual evidence through the creative use multiple audio and visual voices.

Please bring materials that reflect your practice, or a new practice you would like to experiment with: pen and paper, laptop, camera, video camera, film camera, audio recording. 

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Brad Butler graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Documentary Filmmaking. He also has a 1st class degree in Anthropology. In September 2000 he was the winner of BBC2’ Documentary talent 2000 competition, as well as winning the National Student Television Award in 1998. Since 1998 he has been creating a body of work in collaboration with Karen Mirza that has moved between the documentary form and artists film. This ongoing dialogue about practice has manifested itself in artistic work presented in exhibitions, events and the cinema as well as the creation of the unique space www.no-w-here.org.uk. Brads most recent work is a return to issues raised in Anthropology having spent 10 years as an active participant in the ideas of experimental film. Brad’s new solo work In Search of Structure is the first of a new body of work that brings together his experience in both fields.

          

Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk
* Kevin Jerome Everson will be taking questions and comments after the screening by skype.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s prolific body of film work engages with and responds to the history and culture of working class Black Americans and people of African decent. His short gestural films confuse simplistic expectations of ethnographic documentary, poetic narrative, or theatrical drama. He stitches archival footage, scripted sequences, verite documents, and abstract aural and visual minutiae into textured portraits of people, places, economics, politics, and ephemera. Films such as Company Linefocus on details of physical and speech gestures, the mechanics and materials of labour, and employment architecture to explore the lives of city workers in Mansfield Ohio; and hint at bigger questions about freedom and prosperity for Black Americans. The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin is one of Everson’s signature archival films that reveal the construction of performance and portrayal in a minimally edited interview with Martin Luther King’s first cousin about police brutality during race riots in Cleveland Ohio. According to… is an example of Everson’s astute and seamless montage of fiction and non-fiction that aims to question authority, authenticity and the representation and preservation of African American history.

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965) is a filmmaker, originally from Mansfield Ohio, living and working in Charlottesville Virginia. Everson’s three feature films and over 50 short films and videos have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Redcat in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; Whitechapel Gallery in London many other venues worldwide. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NEA Fellowship, two NEH Fellowships, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, and an American Academy Rome Prize. 

PROGRAM

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THOUGHT ON FILM XXI: MONTHLY READING + DISCUSSION GROUP
EXPLORING CINEMA + CINEMATIC PRACTICE THROUGH WRITTEN WORDS

A monthly reading + discussion group, Thought on Film aims to promote critical thought around film product and practice through community-based discussion. Open to the public, Thought on Film fosters the close reading of texts confronting issues in contemporary, cutting-edge cinematic practice and philosophy.

Provoked by the presentation of Kevin Jerome Everson’s work as part of DIM Cinema, October’s meeting will feature an audio recording of Richard Pryor's 'Hank's Place' and a selection from Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun.'

26 October 2009, 6pm | Cineworks [1131 Howe, back lane entrance] | Free

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Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk and double negative collective

" We find ourselves in the role of alchemist: we promote accidents, discoveries, failures; processes that lead into unknown landscapes; the fleeting tangibility of mystical and transformative forces; the begetting of delicate, precious objects in the dark. "             double negative collective manifesto

Since its inception in 2004, the double negative collective has become a major presence in montreal’s experimental cinema scene. their unique philosophy and methodology has had an undeniable impact on the shifting landscape of moving-image art and artist collectives. the double negative collective has succeeded to operate self-financed for over five years. they have maintained their own studio of analogue filmmaking equipment and have organized experimental film screenings, performances and artist talks that continue to inspire audiences at home and abroad. this programme demonstrates the breadth and depth of the collective’s conceptual and aesthetic approaches to cinema.

PROGRAM

Daïchi Saïto, All That Rises. 2007, 7:00mins, 16mm.
Christopher Becks, Parallax. 2007, 5:00mins, 16mm.
Amber Goodwyn, Paper Nautilus. 2005, 4:30mins, 16mm.
Eduardo Menz, Fracas. 2007, 5:00mins, Digital 8.
Lucia Fezzuoglio, Untitled. 2007, 3:00mins, Super-8 to DV.
Julien Idrac, The Nervous Loops. 2005, 5:00mins, DV.
Steven Ladouceur, Artifacts. 2008, 3:00mins, DV.
Malena Szlam, The Garden of Forking Paths (El Jardin de Senderos que se Bifurican). 2008, 4:00mins, 35mm to HD.
Karl Lemieux, Western Sunburn. 2007, 10:00mins, 16mm to DV.
Mike Rollo, Lola. 2008, 2:45mins, 16mm.
Lindsay McIntyre, Though She Never Spoke, This Is Where Her Voice Would Have Been. 2008, 4:40mins, 16mm.
Christopher Becks, Pan of the Landscape. 2005, 11:00mins, 16mm.
Daïchi Saïto, Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis. 2009, 10:00mins, 35mm.
Mike Rollo, Ghosts and Gravel Roads. 2008, 16:00mins, S16mm to HD.

Maggots and Men is an experimental historical narrative set in a mythologized, post-revolutionary Russia. The film dramatizes the events of the 1921 Kronstadt uprising and pays tribute to the Kronstadt sailors’ earnest pursuit of communist ideals. With a subtext of gender anarchy, Maggots and Men positions the struggle for gender equality within a larger struggle for peace and justice. Cast with female-to-male transgender actors, the film documents a rapidly evolving transgender community and illuminates the contemporary gender revolution.  Painting the brief success of Kronstadt’s communal society as a fanciful utopia, Maggots and Men transports us to a realm where we can dream of alternatives to capitalist society.

Derek Jarman, Imagining October. 1984. 27mins, 16mm, UK.

A dreamlike meditation on art and politics in the final years of the Cold War; shot in the streets of Moscow on Super-8 film during the final moments of pre-Perestroika Russia.

Kenneth Anger, Fireworks. 1947, 15mins, 16mm, USA.

One of the earliest wet dreams about the power and physique of Navy Marines, conjured at the mercy of a sailor’s loaded masochism.

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Celebrating the best in independent queer cinema, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival is Vancouver's second largest film festival and the largest queer arts event in Western Canada. The Festival hosts a variety of performances, workshops, panels, parties and more, facilitating a unique community space for 11 days each August.

Programmed by Brel Froebe and Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa from Light Industry NYC (In attendance), with Amy Kazymerchyk
Performances by  Jeffrey Allport + Empress

Inspired by Stan Brakhage’s The Stars Are Beautiful (1974), a sound film that cycles through mythological explanations for the cosmos in dozens of permutations, the curators of tonight's event devised an exploratory text that drew from science fiction, structural anthropology, and deep-space physics. They then approached artists from a wide range of disciplines to create new work in response to this cue, resulting in a series of projects--performances, music, lectures, films, and videos--that navigate across the Speculative Frontier, the boundary between the known and the unknown.

Expect to see and hear: transmissions from Apollo 8, unidentified objects,black metal, alchemy, ghosts, gods, cartoons.

Selections from  Stan Brakhage’s The Stars Are Beautiful (1974)

3) It’s a great roof studded with sequins. The movement of the stars is in relationship to the movement of the sun, giving the impression that the stars are moving across the sky.

4) The stars are optical nerve endings of the eye which the universe is.

9) The fact is, the earth is falling into a well. The sun is the top of the well, the blue sky the walls. The stars are reflections of the real stars behind the sun.  

10) It is a furry animal. The stars are silver hairs.

12) The sky is all together, not composed in such great distances as we suppose. In truth, it is an old fire. The stars are small sparks, the sun a burning coal. The black of the sky at night is ashes, the moon a bubbling drop of water. This is the same with us, i.e.: as the universe burns, so do we. Our heads contain water very much like the sky holds moons. The burning in us keeps the water in our heads boiling and sputtering.

13) The sky is the dead decaying body of God; the stars are glittering maggots.

20) The stars are trembling silver stings to everyone’s brains. The sun and moon are the eyes of the great puppeteer…Once a month he smiles and winks: He has control of our fates.

21) The day-sky is a pool of al our tears: the world is getting smaller and smaller. The night –sky is a blotter to all our black thoughts: there is very little space left. 

30) The sun, moon, and stars are the footprints of God (we are his head) as he walks currently in a circle.

 PROGRAM 

July 14 2009 | Georgia Straight | By Craig Takeuchi

If your eyes glaze over at the mention of the words experimental film, consider this list of names: Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch, Todd Haynes, and Gus Van Sant.

“You wouldn’t have a lot of the most amazing Hollywood films if you didn’t have an experimental-film community,” says Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk, programmer of DIM, a monthly evening of experimental film at the Pacific Cinémathèque (1131 Howe Street). Over tea on Broadway, she discusses how experimental-film techniques penetrate mainstream movies more than most people realize. “I think, oftentimes, it’s subtle. It’s there but simply in the way filmmakers will develop their dialogue…or how people will play with time-space continuums in a film.”

As a teenager, Kazymerchyk used to watch obscure underground films at the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images run by media artist Alex MacKenzie on Commercial Drive, and later at his Blinding Light!! Cinema in Gastown, which closed in 2003. Kazymerchyk noted the impact of its absence.

“I think that there was a real gap left in the city, both in terms of the experimental- and avant-garde film culture that he was representing but also just as a physical space,” she says. “Because it [the Blinding Light!!] wasn’t a formally artist-run centre or a formal institution with boards and programmers…he had a certain autonomy over what happened.”

When an Emily Carr University instructor who is also a Cinémathèque board member asked Kazymerchyk what might make the theatre more accessible to a younger audience, she recalled how the Art Institute of Chicago ran a weekly series called Conversations on the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center. When she proposed a similar program, the Cinémathèque was receptive and gave her “carte blanche”.

Over the past year, the program has included screenings of structuralist cinema, works by Jean Genet and Sid Chow Tan, Super 8 films shot in one take without editing, and even multimedia performances.

“One of the things that I was interested in doing was creating a space that wasn’t just for experimental film,” she says. “As I’m doing it, I’m finding actually what I think is more interesting and finding is an even harder discipline to find space for: people who are doing more performative cinema.”

Kazymerchyk clarifies that the city’s space problem isn’t one of lack, but continuity. “The space issue in the city is not necessarily that there’s not enough space—because there actually are a lot of spaces, I think—it’s just that there’s no security in it. Things are constantly disappearing.”

Attendance at DIM has generally varied from about eight to 45 audience members. Nonetheless, DIM is now celebrating its first anniversary on July 20 (7:30 p.m.) with Tough Stuff from the BUFF, a program of 15 experimental and activist videos from Buffalo, New York. It’ll be followed up on July 21 with a free slide lecture by Portland artist, curator, and activist Marc Moscato about DIY culture and city policy at 7 p.m. at Spartacus Books (684 East Hastings).

Happy birthday, DIM, and, hopefully, many more.

Photo Credit: Kelly Spivey, Poor White Trash Girl: Class Consciousness, 2002

One year ago, DIM was inaugurated into the Pacific Cinematheque's programming calendar with a double bill of Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour and Frederic Moffett's Jean Genet in Chicago.

Since that balmy summer evening I have been blessed with the company of out of town filmmakers, back porch dinner parties, sailing trips, veggie oil reconaissance missions, mural paintings, outdoor projections, and late nights at La Bodega. It has been precious and memorable.

People often ask me why the evening is called DIM. Dim is the quality of light in Vancouver, the secret magic and wonder that we experience with the obscure and abstract, the texture of the theatre, and the quiet that is inspired by the dimming of lights. Today I was flipping through James Broughton's 'Making Light of It', which I was given almost exactly 11 years ago for my birthday, and I came across this quote to deepen the phenomenon: Movie images are dim reflections of the beauty and ferocity in mankind.  

How's that for an anniversary present! What more could I want.

Thank you so much to all of the filmmakers, distributors, curators, Pacific Cinematheque staff and volunteers, press, and co-presenters that have supported DIM. I will do my best to list everyone below. 

I would like extend my warmest affection to Gabriel Saloman, Kika Thorne and Cheyanne Turions for their enduring enthusiasm, support and collaboration, and to Scott Nelson for developing this website with me.

And my highest regard goes to The Pacific Cinematheque's Director of Programming Jim Sinclair for having faith in experimental cinema and giving me this special opportunity. 

You are truly amazing.

xo amylynn

ARTISTS || Frederic Moffett, Jean Genet, Hannah Miami, Daniel Barrow, Cam Matamoros, Shana Moulton, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Goody B. Wiseman, Kevin Hegge, Leah Glushien, Maiko Tanaka, Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby, Bill Daniel, Shauna McGarry, Tammy Rae Carland, Naomi Uman, Dulcie Clarkson, Eileen Maxson, C.Ryder Cooley, Zoey Kroll, Sativa Peterson, Vanessa Renwick, Sarah Hanssen, Peggy Anne Berton, Marc St. Aubin, Hooliganship, Crystalbeard, Takeshi Murata, Adrian Freeman, Blu, Bruce Bickford, Ola Vasiljeva, Paper Rad, Emanuelle Kabu, Philippe Blanchard, Jeff Kricshun, Shayne Ehman, Setch Scriver, Arlea Ashcroft, Andrea von Wichert, Deco Dawson, David Lopan, Shawn Fulton, Kyle Ketchemonia, Alex Larose, Terryll Loffler, Tricia Martin, Terry Mialkowky, Shannon Jardine, Mike Maryniuk, Solomon Nagler, Diane Ouellete, robert.daniel.pytlyk., Alex Rogalski, Daichi Saito, Vanda Schmockel, Katherine Skelton, Cam Woykin, Adrian Blackwell, Christian Giroux, Daniel Young, Miles Mogulescu, Andy Harvey, Moira Simpson, Elizabeth Walker, Stan Douglas, Paul Wong, Jeanette Reinhardt, Gina Daniels, Gary Bourgeoise, Lorna Boschman, Persimmon Blackridge, Sid Chow Tan, James Diamond, Aaron Chan, Lulu Gurney, Carmen Pollard, desmedia collective, WorkingTV, Projections, Vanessa Renwick, Daniel Menche, Chris Welsby, William Raban, WKBW, Tony Conrad, Paris Henderson, Chris Ernst, Marc Moscato, Terry Cuddy, Esther Johnson, Critical Art Ensemble, Kelly Spivey, Julie Perini, Staphanie Gray, Real Dream Cabaret, Meg Knowles, Gabriella Citriniti, David Gracon.

CURATORS || Hooliganship, Alex Rogalski, Ben Donoghue, Micahel Lithgow, Gabriel Saloman, Marc Moscato, Julie Perini, David Gracon, Shauna McGarry, Miranda July, 

CO-PRESENTERS || WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution 1967-1980, Vancouver Art Gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, Thought on Film, Presentation House Gallery, Emily Carr University, Signal + Noise Media Arts Festival, Spartacus Books

DISTRIBUTORS || Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, VTAPE, Video Out, Canyon Cinema, LUX, Video Data Bank

PACIFIC CINEMATHEQUE STAFF || Steve Chow, Amber Orchard, Jim Sinclair, Jessica Parsons, Jack Vermee, Matt Law, Jason Barker, Sue Cormier, Donna

SPECIAL INFLUENCES || Alex Mackenzie, Cinema Project, Pablo de Ocampo

Georgia Straight Article: DIM Experimental Film Series Celebrates It's First Year

* Photo Credit: Chris Welsby's dinner on my back porch. June 14th 2009