XINEMA x UNIT/PITT present: BUDDING

XINEMA x UNIT/PITT present Budding: an experimental film programme curated by Kasper Feyrer and Kara Hansen.

Sunday, July 28, 8:30pm
The Garden – UNIT/PITT 
2954 West 4th Ave

This programme included moving-image portholes by BC-based, Canadian and international experimental filmmakers that have influenced Feyrer and Hansen’s individual and shared interest in queer ecological intimacies and parasitic film reveries, through tactile and playful approaches to relational cinematic processes, presented on both 16mm film and digital.

The programme included a series of experimental film screenings (detailed below), as well as the premiere of the Fairy Clocks Workshop daisy chained film.

Special thanks to Sidney Gordon, Joni Schinkel, Héloïse Auvray, Banafshe Salehi, Jerome Paradis, Jana Rankov, & Ryan Ermacorma.

Handbill designed by Sidney Gordon. Documentation by Felix Rapp.

SCREENING

Mike MacDonald, Rat Art, 1990

Mike MacDonald, still from Rat Art, 1990, HD video, 10 min. Courtesy of the Artist and Vtape.

• Rat Art (Canada, 1990)
• Mike MacDonald
• HD video
• 10 min

Inspired by the popular TV program, America’s Funniest Home Videos as well as a 1989 Vancouver performance event by Rick Gibson that concerned the fate of a rat called Sniffy. 

Distributed by Vtape.

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Swamp, 1970

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, still from Swamp, 1970, 16mm film to HD video, 6 min. Courtesy of the Holt/Smithson Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

• Swamp (USA, 1970)
• Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson
• 16mm to HD video
• 6 min

A visceral, chaotic journey unfolds as the artists confront a dense maze of plant life, struggling with the limitations of their own perception, and for the failure of technology to stand in for vision. The visual element shows exactly what Holt sees: a mass of vegetation.

Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.

Nazli Dinçel, Between Relating and Use, 2018

Nazli Dinçel, still from Between Relating and Use, 2018, 16mm film, 9 min. Courtesy of the Artist and Canyon Cinema.

• Between Relating and Use (Argentina/USA, 2018)
• Nazli Dinçel
• 16mm film
• 9 min

Excerpt

Borrowing words from Laura Mark’s “Transnational Object” and DW Winnicott’s “Transitional Object”, this film is an attempt to ethically make work in a foreign land. Transitioning from assuming the position of an ethnographer, we turn and explore inwards- on how we use our lovers.

Distributed by Canyon Cinema.

Matt Davies, Grit, 2021

Matt Davies, still from Grit, 2021, 16mm film, 3.5 min. Courtesy of the Artist.

• Grit (UK, 2021)
• Matt Davies
• 16mm film
• 3.5 min

This film documents an 18 mile walk along Chesil Beach in Dorset, in which the film maker takes a single frame every 12 steps in order to capture the entirety of the walk/beach within a 100ft roll of 16mm film. 

Special thanks to Kika Thorne

Barbara Hammer, Women I Love, 1976

Barbara Hammer, still from Women I Love, 1976, 16mm film, 22.5 min. Courtesy of the Artist and Canyon Cinema.

• Women I Love (USA, 1976)
• Barbara Hammer
• 16mm film
• 22.5 min 

A series of cameo portraits of the filmmaker’s friends and lovers intercut with a playful celebration of fruits and vegetables in nature. Culminating footage evokes a tantric painting of sexuality sustained.

Distributed by Canyon Cinema.

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FAIRY CLOCKS FILM WORKSHOP

Eco-processed daisy-chained 16mm film developed during the Fairy Clocks Workshop on July 20 + 21, 2024. Curated by Kara Hansen and Kasper Feyrer. Film features footage by Amelia Darragh, Sophia Jaworski, Madeleine Keen, Michelle Helene Mackenzie, Hannah Moller, Shahir Qrishnaswamy, Tess Rafael, Vivien Sagsen, Morgan Sears-Williams, Jaylene Scheible, Eric Tkacyk, & Sara Wylie.

Fairy Clocks Film Workshop

• July 20 – 21, 2024, 1-5pm
  The Garden – UNIT/PITT
  2954 West 4th Ave
  ‘Vancouver,’ BC

XINEMA and UNIT/PITT present 𝙁𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙮 𝘾𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙨, a garden-based 16mm exquisite-corpse film workshop facilitated by artists and filmmakers Kasper Feyrer and Kara Hansen.

Fairy clocks are another name for dandelions: the fuzzy, many-petaled flowers with lion toothed leaves often considered to be merely garden weeds. As photonastic plants, dandelions respond to light by opening their petals in the day and closing them at night or in response to cloudy weather. Fairy clocks are versatile: they are light sensitive, nutritionally and medicinally beneficial, and their powers can also be used to eco-process celluloid film.

Workshop participants will learn Bolex H-16 camera basics while making a collective 16mm film poem. Through collective learning, each participant will be guided to shoot a section of black and white negative film in the garden, which will be daisy-chained into a six minute in-camera edited film. The collective work will approach the camera as an extension of the senses, leading participants to create process-driven films that engage vision through touch. Following the shoot, participants will forage Fairly Clocks in the surrounding area and prepare a plant-extraction that will be used to process the collective film.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS/CURATORS

Kara Ditte Hansen works with experimental non-fiction filmmaking and cinematic portraiture. Her practice looks at human and non-human relationships with the material of the earth, systems of extraction and waste, and how these seemingly external materials collide with the interior worlds of individuals. She received her MFA from the Cinematic Arts program at University of Milwaukee—Wisconsin where she now lives part-time. Otherwise she spends her time as a guest living and working on the unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

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.

XINEMA [zin-em-a] is a nomadic artist-run experimental film series founded and based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam and the Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). They operate between spaces and regions, facilitating experimental screenings, workshops and related events, with a focus on local wherever that may be. Their main priorities are to remain low-barrier, accepting free ongoing and unlimited submissions of any year or premiere status; prioritize underrepresented artists and media forms; and connect filmmakers and film-lovers of various backgrounds, disciplines and career levels.