Dada's Daughter, dir. Sara Sowell
US | 20 | 16mm | Manitoban premiere
Dada’s Daughter is an expanded cinema performance using 16mm projections and live cinema-objects.

The performance is introduced with hand-developed black and white 16mm photograms made from the imprints of microplastic stars, beads, jewelry, and other accumulated objects. This process of exposing objects directly onto celluloid is drawn from Man Ray’s “Rayographs”. Spliced in between the projected photograms are sections of clear film leader that cue a live performance re-animating the cinema-objects used to create the photograms.

Cinema-objects are mirrors, perforated metals, cookie cutters in the shape of stars, metal ball bearings, and disks mounted to motors that are manipulated live by the hand of the artist. When placed in front of the projector these objects create tactile optical images; impressions of form, shape and pattern that reenact the photogram process. The presence of the photogram reel and performative qualities of this work highlight the tension between ontological concepts of cinema – the material and the ephemeral.

Bleached Vistas / Double Wide, dirs. Dektol Corporation
CA | 25 | 35mm + video | Manitoban premiere
Bleached Vistas / Double Wide is an expanded cinema project by experimental film artists Heidi Phillips and Ian Campbell. The duo creates fractured narratives from scraps of cast-off 35mm films exploring the materiality of celluloid. Experimenting with these films reveals sublime images and the fragility of the physical artifact. This project concentrates specifically on commercial debris : the 35mm trailer—just before it became extinct due to the advent of digital projection. These trailers whisper from a forgotten Hollywood era. They have been sitting outdoors for years absorbing the decay that energizes them as ephemeral objects. This patina of age and neglect allows a false sense of nostalgia that simultaneously pushes the viewer to dwell within the physicality of dirt, scratches, and sprockets and enter a formal universe of shape and colour.

@dektolcorporation