reading DAVID RIMMEcommentary on the films R 1967–2014 edited by MIKE HOOLBOOM + BRETT KASHMERE reading EDITORS | Mike Hoolboom | PROOFREADERS Brett Kashmere Christina Battle David Burnham DAVID DESIGNER | Brett Kashmere Kilby Smith-McGregor | THANKS RIMMEcommentary on the films R Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre 1967–2014 Sarah Butterfield This project was supported by the Canada Council CONTENTS CONTENTS VANCOUVER LETTER QUICk — WHO ARE DAVID RIMMER by Kirk Tougas 18 INTRODUCTION AND JAMES HERBERT? by Mike Hoolboom 1 SIMPLE GENIUS by Roger Greenspun 30 by Andreas Schroeder 20 RECOVERING LOST HISTORY: THE FILMS OF DAVID RIMMER VANCOUVER AVANT-GARDE by Kristina Nordstrom 33 Cinema 1960–1969 (EXCERPT) CONVERSATION WITH DAVID RIMMER by Al Razutis 2 SHORT FILMS by Michael de Courcy 21 (EXCERPT) UNDERGROUND FILM EVENING by Rick Hancox 36 MAY BRING SURPRISES INTERMEDIA MAKES WAVES by Brad Robinson 25 by John Driscoll 13 MOVIE JOURNAL (EXCERPT) LETTER FROM VANCOUVER AN EVENING OF DAVE Rimmer’s FiLMS by Jonas Mekas 38 by Tony Reif 14 by Gerry Gilbert 27 ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE NEW CANADIAN CINEMA: by Leonard Horowitz 39 IMAGES FROM THE AGE OF PARADOX THE FILMS OF DAVID RIMMER (EXCERPT) by Roger Greenspun 29 by Gene Youngblood 16 DAVID RIMMER: HONESTY OF VISION GARBAGE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VANCOUVER AVANT-GARDE CINEMA by George Csaba Koller 40 by Mike Hoolboom 54 1970–83 (EXCERPT) It’s FiLM ALL RIGHT, BUT IS IT ART? DAVID Rimmer’s by Al Razutis and Tony Reif 78 by Natalie Edwards 45 SURFACING ON THE THAMES DAVID RIMMER by Blaine Allan 56 DAVID RIMMER by Peter Morris 80 DAVID RIMMER: by Eleanor Beattie 48 A CRITICAL ANALYSIS THE REPRESSION OF THE EROTIC IN EXPERIMENTAL Cinema or ‘SAFE by Al Razutis 63 SEEING THROUGH THE FOG: SEX FOR THE LITERALLY Minded’ EXAMINING NARROWS INLET ‘MY FILMS ARE DIFFICULT TO WATCH’ by David Rimmer 81 by Clint Enns 49 by Jamie Lamb 72 TERROR AL NEIL: A PORTRAIT RIMMER TURNS FILM TO ART by Stan Brakhage 83 by Joyce Nelson 51 by Art Perry 74 REPRODUCTION AND REPETITION WEST COAST FILMMAKING: HISTORY OF HISTORY: DAVID Rimmer’s (EXCERPT) DAVID RIMMER: FOUND FOOTAGE RE-FUSING THE CONTRADICTIONS by Tony Reif 53 by Catherine Russell 84 by Colin Browne 76 NEW WORKS SHOWCASE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE FRINGE ROYALTY: AN INTERVIEW by Blaine Allan 92 by Colin Browne 111 by Mike Hoolboom 147 EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA SERIES DAVID RIMMER: SEEING THROUGH THE PAST, OPENS TONIGHT TWILIGHT IN THE IMAGE BANK AGAIN: DAVID Rimmer’s Found FOOTAGE FILMS by Jennie Punter 94 by Catherine Russell 112 by Samuel LaFrance 156 NEW EXPERIMENTS DAVID Rimmer’s VANCOUVER NOMINATION STATEMENT by Catherine Jonasson (ed.) 96 by Mike Hoolboom 130 by Michael Snow 160 DAVID RIMMER INTERVIEW LIZARD FILM SCALES THE ART OF JAZZ by William C. Wees 98 WHEN THE MIND REACHES OUT TO : by Peter Birnie 142 TOUCH THE THING IT SEES A SELF-PORTRAIT DAVID RIMMER: FILM AND Tapes 1968–1992 DECONSTRUCTING NARRATIVE: by David Rimmer 162 STORY-TELLING, DOCUMENTARY, by Dawn Caswell & Jim Shedden 99 AND EXPERIMENTAL FILM HANDMADE, OR DAVID Rimmer’s by Peter Harcourt 143 FILM AND VIDEO WORK 170 DIVINE MANNEQUIN TEXT SOURCES 171 by Blaine Allan 102 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION rare it was and for how many years, that anyone would spare a word at all about this arcane moment by Mike Hoolboom of the cinematic underground. David was fortunate to receive early welcome mats from writers at the The first time I hitchhiked west, headed towards a New York Times and Village Voice, not to mention local shadowy tree planting hope, I dreamt of pushing as lights in Vancouver. The mid-career retrospective in far as the coast and showing up on his doorstep, or Vancouver brought in a new rush of interest, and with if not doorstep then bar stoop, basement projection, his turn towards film/video hybrids in the 1980s a perfect window. Perhaps I imagined that it would be renewed critical analysis began, along with outraged enough to sit inside that blue eyed stare for a moment art critics, foreign retrospective nods, letters of rec- and learn to see the way he did, as if everything ran ommendation for Canada’s highest honours. The a beat slower, as if there was time above all to look. whole shebang closes with a text drawn from a film To look and to absorb the experience of looking. The proposal that may or may not become emulsion, but short films of David Rimmer have done so much to makes for a fascinating read as an artist looks back on help my practice of looking, always urging me to take a lifetime’s work at the age of eighty. more time. To look more slowly. To look again. Strange to think about a book about David though, he This collection owes everything to the efforts of Sarah was never big on words. Words were part of the cover Butterfield, who has done more than anyone in recent story that had to be seen through so that he could get years to bring David back into the world. This book is down to some more fundamental relation, running it only a footnote to her kindness and dedications. through his large and sensitive fingers. The sentences are gathered here not to take the place of his pictures, The book gathers voices across six decades of but to point the way back towards them. And some response to David’s work, sometimes as personal offer pleasures, rare and nearly forbidden, all their missive or newspaper brief, sometimes as academic own. Great thanks to all who offered their permis- pronouncement or historical visitation. How very sions, and apologies to those who I didn’t get hold of. Please write me and let me know. And enjoy. n 1 Variations 1. RECOVERING LOST HISTORY RECOVERING LOST HISTORY: VANCOUVER AVANT-GARDE CINEMA 1960–1969 (EXCERPT) “Each generation redefines art — and not in books by Al Razutis or essays but through the works of art. Cinema of yesterday was defined by the films of yesterday. Cinema of today is defined by films of today.” ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN — Jonas Mekas Vancouver Art and Artists, 1931–1983, What Pauline Kael Lost at the Movies (1965) Vancouver Art Gallery, 1983 “It has taken more than seventy years for global man to come to terms with the cinematic medium, to liberate it from theatre and literature. We had to wait until our consciousness caught up with our technology... If we’ve tolerated a certain absence of discipline, it has been in favor of a freedom through which new language hopefully would be developed. With a fusion of aesthetic sensibilities and technological innovation that language finally has been achieved. The new cinema has emerged as the only aesthetic language to match the environment in which we live.” — Gene Youngblood Expanded Cinema (1970) 2 Sharing with Mekas a predisposed hatred for “middle THE EARLY SIXTIES: cinema man attempts to express a total phenomenon ground” cinema and criticism, and an ongoing interest A COMPLEX MOSAIC OF DISCOVERY — his own consciousness.”1 Youngblood’s conception in aesthetic, theoretical, and technological develop- For many contemporary media students, the early six- of “synaesthesia” was predicated on the notions of ments in contemporary cinema, I come to a task ties represent a time which coincides with their birth, synthesis (of subjective, objective, and non-objective that is long overdue: a written document concerning and as such is relegated to pre-memory, rumour, correlatives) and the “harmony of different and oppos- the history and practice of Vancouver’s avant-garde myth, and media accounts of an “accepted history”. ing impulses produced by a work of art...the simultan- 2 cinema. To treat such a vast subject adequately and Many artists and political activists in this time period eous perception of harmonic opposites.” Syncretism within the deadline imposed on me is rather difficult; did not document their activities, and if they did these and synergy featured prominently in his theory and yet the urgency is also prompted by a personal desire documents were relegated to an “underground” cul- acted as antidotes to compartmentalized thinking, to finally recover a largely unwritten and unacknow- tural status. A few accounts of this counter culture still perception, and specialized knowledge. ledged sense of Vancouver film culture. remain in archival vaults or form part of film co-op col- Youngblood’s views echoed the thoughts of Buckmin- If these essays (see also Critical Perspectives on Vancou- lections. As for the “dominant” culture, we can easily ster Fuller, John Cage, and others. In general, synaes- ver Avant-Garde Cinema 1970–83) can reveal the hist- recover syndicated versions that chronicle the open thetics contextualized art and cinema within a process ory and contexts of a Vancouver-based practice, they revolts against militarism, authority, and the capitalist that engaged chance correspondences, multi-sensory will necessarily do so at the expense of a definitive state; we can also recover stories featuring rejection formats, and a simulacrum of expression planes that or exhaustive examination. I have imposed several of middle-class morality, ideology, the concept of were not organized by, did not correspond to, the guidelines on the work: first, the focus will reside in family unit, orthodox sexuality, western philosophy laws of causality. These views also posed a problem contributions to Vancouver’s avant-garde practice that and religion. Yet beneath the accepted notions of six- for conscious thought, and in particular that facility are ostensibly non-commercial — that is, artists work- ties’ disenfranchisement there existed a substratum, which we call reason. Immanuel Kant (in his first ing in non-narrative and non-dramatic film forms, an underground network, of remarkable discovery, Kritik) had stated that “the activity of our reason con- and outside the corporate industry base.