Film Screening in the Garden at UNIT/PITT
- ft. Kasper Feyrer, Tamara Henderson, Peter Lipskis, Sam Perry, and Al Razutis
- Organized by XINEMA
- Sunday, April 28, 2024, 8pm
- Total program time: 76.5 min
This program is a part of the 2024 Capture Photography Participating Events.
Please join us on Sunday, April 28th for 𝙉 𝘿𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚, an experimental film screening and gathering organized by XINEMA + UNIT/PITT to accompany Al Razutis’ exhibition 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙫𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙨, 𝙀𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙮 𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙚𝙨, curated by Felix Rapp. The screening will conclude with a Q+A with filmmakers Kasper Feyrer and Al Razutis.
N: a point in euclidean space representing infinity in all directions; a dimension that extends beyond the familiar. Through the works of filmmakers Kasper Feyrer, Tamara Henderson, Peter Lipskis, Sam Perry, and Al Razutis, the perceptive qualities of holography and its relationship to the physical world are accentuated through the lens of the n-dimension. Drawing from the Holographic Paradigm Theory, these seven local works portray a world where there is order in chaos and uncertainty is only superficial. Portrayed through the celluloid medium, these films use thematic repetition, crystalline imagery, and structural experimentation to queer our comprehension of the unknown.
Including works released between the years of 1965-2023, this program showcases a range of voices from Vancouver’s experimental film history, representing a community of filmmakers influenced by the shifting ethos and environments of the Pacific Northwest.
**Please note, this event is taking place outside, please dress accordingly.
Pay-what-you-can tickets will be available to purchase at the event.
Seats are limited with additional standing room available—please plan to arrive early if you wish to secure a seat.**
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Screening:
Kasper Feyrer, still from O’on (2023), 16mm film transferred to digital. Courtesy of the Artist.
O’on (2023) — Kasper Feyrer — 16mm to DCP — 9 min
Speculative habitable zones exist at enormous distance yet speak intimacies with a spectroscope, a rainbow of elements, a vocabulary of queer ontologies.
Content Warning: Shaky camera.
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Al Razutis, still from Atomic Gardening (1981), 16mm film. Courtesy of the Artist.
Atomic Gardening (1981) — Al Razutis — 16mm film — 5 min
Observed NORAD missile control chatter accompanies visuals of biological mutation in the eerie white light of nuclear annihilation. A macro time-lapse of strange crystalline growth on NATO integrated-circuit boards submerged in underwater wreckage.
Content Warning: Visual depictions and auditory discussions of nuclear weapons.
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Peter Lipskis, still from Crystals (1985), 16mm film. Courtesy of the Artist and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
Crystals (1985) — Peter Lipskis— 16mm film — 4 min
A cinematic tribute to William Bentley, a Vermont dairy farmer who pioneered the “art” of snowflake photography for forty-six winters (1885-1931), proving that no two of his 5381 specimens were identical. This film contains about 1500 examples (fewer than the average snowball), showing the incredible variation of design in nature, while producing the effect of an “organic” hexagonal mandala in a state of continual metamorphosis.
Distributed by Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC).
Content warning: Flashing lights and imagery, repetitive noise.
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Sam Perry, still from Into It/Sun Strobes Light Shows Nitobe (1965), 16mm film transferred to digital. Distributed by the Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.
Into It/Sun Strobes Light Shows Nitobe (1965) — Sam Perry — 16mm to DCP — 15 min
A finished piece of psychedelic, LSD-informed film, including segments shot in the Nitobe Memorial Garden, UBC with filmmaker Gary Lee-Nova.
Distributed by the Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.
Content Warning: Loud, persistent drone noise.
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Kasper Feyrer and Tamara Henderson, still from Consider the Belvedere (2015), 16mm film. Courtesy of the Artist.
Consider the Belvedere (2015) — Kasper Feyrer + Tamara Henderson — 16mm film — 10 min
A chronicle of the lives of five bottles struggling to survive in the big city.
Distributed by the Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.
Content Warning: Shaky camera.
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Al Razutis, still from Visual Alchemy (1973), 16mm film. Courtesy of the Artist and The Cinematheque Archive.
Visual Alchemy (1973) — Al Razutis — 16mm film — 9 min
A poetic document depicting psychological, alchemical, and physical aspects of earlier work in visual “transmutation”. The work depicted in this film includes early holography at the first art-holography studio in Canada and the projection of images in space utilizing lasers and optics.
Content Warning: Flashing lights.
Distributed by The Cinematheque Archive.
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Al Razutis, still from Aaeon (abridged version) (1971), 16mm film. Courtesy of the Artist and The Cinematheque Archive.
Aaeon (abridged version) (1971) — Al Razutis — 16mm film — 25 min
A film composed of four interwoven stanzas that redefine mythological space and time, circulating around the ideas of re-birth. This work is composed and edited on an optical printer affecting distortions of motion, time, composition, and colour.
Content Warning: Flashing lights, allusions to murder and suicide.
Distributed by The Cinematheque Archive.
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Artist Bios:
Kasper Feyrer was born in lək̓ʷəŋən Territory, and now lives and works on the unceded territories of the səlilwətaɬ, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm. They root their practice in an embodied engagement with celluloid filmmaking and sculpture, with emphasis on the body’s relationship to these media. They conceive of the camera as a bodily extension of the human sensorium — a device through which one can feel time and perception, and thereby aid or alter one’s experience of the world. Feyrer has an interest in queer ecologies which relates to this experimentation in aiding and altering perception.
Tamara Henderson (born 1982) is a Canadian artist known for her installation works incorporating film, painting and sculpture. She studied at NSCAD University, Halifax, the Städelschule, Frankfurt and received an MFA degree from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award. Her works are included in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Tate Gallery. Within her very personal and subjective practice, artworks are means, vessels of communication between different states: conscious and unconscious, dream and awake-ness.
Peter Lipskis was brought to Canada in 1954 and has lived in Vancouver since 1958. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of British Columbia. Influences on his filmmaking are rooted in the post World War I European avant-garde and the American underground film.
“My films are motion pictures, aesthetically closer to the visual arts and music than to conventional cinema. They are concerned with composition, form, graphic design, colour, texture, rhythm, movement and physiological as well as psychological perception. Various optical and contact printing techniques on a variety of film stocks have been used to control the image.” – P. L.
Peter Lipskis passed away on March 12, 2024
Writer, filmmaker, artist, Sam Perry was born in 1939. He was a student at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960s, where he first came in contact with the experimental multimedia work of David Orcutt, who supported Perry’s growing interest in film animation. By the mid-1960s, Perry’s film and image projections played a key role in the events at Vancouver’s Sound Gallery and Motion Studio. In addition, Perry spearheaded the Tripps Festial (July 29-31, 1966), a local multimedia sensorium of music, film, slides, and moving liquid utilizing over fifty projectors and 25,000 square feet of screen. Perry’s interests were rooted in an environment’s ability to transform a participant’s consciousness. The addition of light and film projections to musical performance was an attempt to alter the traditional relationship between audience and entertainer, shifting the focus away from the individual performances to the collective production of new realities.
Perry took his own life in 1966.
Al Razutis is a multimedia artist, educator and innovator in motion-picture film and video, holographic art and technologies, stereoscopic 3D video art, graphics for websites, and interactive 3D virtual reality. He is a critical writer and historian with an interest in preservation of west-coast holographic art history. Educated in physics and chemistry, he has brought a combination of technological interests to his works which have spanned over five decades. He is the founder of numerous film organizations and was a tenured professor at SFU. His works in avant-garde films and electronic medias continue to be exhibited internationally.
