AFCOOP's BIG Email

From: Martha Cooley Subject: AFCOOP's BIG email - the HIFF edition Date: April 5, 2012 4:53:58 PM ADT To: Martha Cooley 1 Attachment, 60.8 KB

HIFF – Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival Spirited Films From Here and Far www.hiff.ca April 10‐14, 2012

Now in its 6th year, HIFF remains dedicated to the exhibition of film and video as art, in a noncompetitive setting.

This year’s festival includes more than 20 events and 75 films. Special guest artists include San Franciscan filmmaker Paul Clipson, who will be presenting a master class, and screening a selection of his experimental Super‐8mm films. Retrospectives from filmmakers Janie Geiser and Robert Flaherty, as well as video artist Tom Sherman, are also featured in the program.

The festival launched on March 31st with a special screening of the classic 1925 film Battleship Potemkin with live musical accompaniment at the University of King’s College. The full festival kicks off on Tuesday April 10th with the award‐winning film essay The Forgotten Space followed by Ottawa‐ based SAW Video’s ambitious video commissioning project, Public Domain and the HIFF opening reception. The festival will also include the debut of local filmmaker Eva Madden‐Hagen’s film POSE, the latest work to come out of AFCOOP’s Filmmaker in Residence program. Also as part of the festival, Live Art Dance Productions will present the feature length documentary Movement (R)evolution Africa. Events will take place at The Bus Stop Theatre, NSCAD University Film School and University of King’s College. Tickets are available at AFCOOP, 5663 Cornwallis Street, at www.hiff.ca, and at the door. Festival Passes are also available.

The Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival is presented by the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, with participation from the NSCAD University Film Studies Department, Dalhousie University, and the University of King’s College with the financial participation of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture & Heritage, and Telefilm Canada.

FESTIVAL AT (more than) A GLANCE

TUESDAY APRIL 10 7:00PM | SCREENING: “Public Domain” A Q&A session with a participating artist will follow this screening Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street FREE Event

Public Domain originated in 2009 as a video commissioning project of SAW Video, a media art centre in Ottawa. Seven artists were selected from a national call for proposals to create videos drawn from archival films, photographs and audio recordings held in the collection of Library and Archives Canada. Over the course of a year, SAW Video assisted the artists with the process of researching and collecting materials for use in their work. The completed projects bring a critical perspective to the found materials, reflecting on themes of appropriation, memory, fragility and identity. Public Domain has been touring a number of venues across Canada, the USA, and the UK in 2011‐12.

9:00PM | SCREENING: “The Forgotten Space” HIFF 2012 Opening reception will follow the screening Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

The Forgotten Space follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those The Forgotten Space follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega‐ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. And in Bilbao, we discover the most sophisticated expression of the belief that the maritime economy, and the sea itself, is somehow obsolete.

A range of materials is used: descriptive documentary, interviews, archive stills and footage, clips from old movies. The result is an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today. The Forgotten Space is based on Sekula’s Fish Story, seeking to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea. (dirs. Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, 2010, 112 min).

10:30PM | HIFF 2012 Opening Reception & Book Launch for Jerry White's “Revisioning Europe: The Films of John Berger and Alain Tanner” Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street FREE Event

WEDNESDAY APRIL 11 7:00PM | SCREENING: Atlantic Narrative Showcase Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

Including films: The Open (dir. Daniel Boos, 2012, 1 min.) Senior Barista (dir. Jason Levangie, 2010, 7:26 min.) Those Forgotten (dir. Alyssa Buchanan, 2011, 7:24 min.) Fiddler’s Reel (Marc Almon, 2011, 17:31 min.) Supersoldier Academy (dir. Struan Sutherland, 2011, 4 min.) EDEN (dir. Greg Jackson, 2011, 2 min.) Sandwich Crazy (dir. Michael Doucette, 2011, 7:52 min.) Deep End (dir. Brettan Hannam, 2011, 6:17 min.) First Words (Fabien Melanson, 2011, 7:37 min.) Katrina’s New Beau (dir. Michael Ray Fox, 2011, 9:30 min.) Flush (dir. Megan Wennberg, 2011)

9:00PM | SCREENING: “The Works of Paul Clipson” Q&A with the filmmaker will follow this screening Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

Paul Clipson has shown his films internationally in various galleries, festivals and performance venues in Belgium, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and Russia, as well as throughout the U.S. He works primarily in film, video and on paper, often collaborating on films, live performances and installations with sound artists and musicians.

THURSDAY APRIL 12 10:00AM | ARTIST TALK: Paul Clipson NSCAD University Film School | 1649 Brunswick Street FREE Event

My approach to making films is an attempt to bring to light subconscious concerns that reveal themselves while filming in an improvised stream of consciousness manner. Aspects of memory, dreams and the everyday are juxtaposed with densely layered, in‐camera edited images, in a style that encourages unplanned‐for results. Utilizing an intuitive process, where improvisation and the unintentional are essential to my filmmaking methodology, I’m less concerned with a preconceived result and more with exploring the moment. The films are often screened at performances with musicians, providing an exciting environment in which visual and musical interactions can be studied for future work. – Paul Clipson

1:00PM | INDUSTRY EVENT: “Grant Writing for Filmmakers/Media Artists” with Laura Jeanne Lefave (Program Officer, Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts) NSCAD University Film School FREE Event

Pre‐registration is required for this event. To pre‐register, visit www.hiff.ca In this session, Laura Jeanne Lefave (Program Officer, Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts) will offer an outline of the Canada Council for the Arts’ programs relating to video, film, audio, new media and curating media arts. As part of her presentation, she will facilitate an intensive workshop on grant writing, with a focus on grants to individual artists, travel grants, and professional development grants. To make the most of this opportunity to raise questions and obtain clarifications, it is highly recommended that those attending review, in advance, the available programs and their application processes on the Canada Council for the Arts website.

7:00PM | SCREENING: “Movement (R)evolution Africa” Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

In an astonishing exposition of choreographic fomentation, nine African choreographers from Senegal to South Africa tell the stories of an emergent art form and their diverse and deeply contemporary expressions of self. Stunning choreography and riveting critiques challenge stale stereotypes of “traditional Africa” to unveil soul‐shaking responses to the beauty and tragedy of 21st century Africa. Among the artists appearing in the film are Company Kongo Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako (Democratic Republic of Congo), Company Rary (Madagascar), Sello Pesa (South Africa), Company TchéTché (Côte d’Ivoire), Company Raiz di Polon (Cape Verde), Company Jant Bi (Senegal) and Kota Yamazaki (Japan), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and members of Urban Bush Women (USA). This feature‐length documentary is produced and directed by Joan Frosch and co‐directed and edited by Alla Kovgan.

9:00PM | SCREENING: AFCOOP 2012 Filmmaker In Residence Eva Madden‐Hagen’s “Pose” Reception will follow screening and Q&A Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street FREE Event

Pose explores the unique experience of posing as a nude model through the eyes of Halifax‐based comic book artist Dave Cullen. Dave has spent his life studying the human form but recently realized sitting behind the drawing board wasn’t fulfilling the complete experience. A study in contrast and contradiction, Dave wanted to see what it would be like to be the subject of the artist’s eye rather than the executor the vision. Pose joins him on his journey.

FRIDAY APRIL 13 10:00AM | INDUSTRY EVENT: “Business Affairs 101″ with Lori McCurdy, Investment Analyst at Telefilm Canada NSCAD University Film School FREE Event Pre‐registration is required for this event. To pre‐register vist www.hiff.ca So you have a kickass script and a wonder cast that you know will come together in a Genie‐winning production, your first long‐form film. Your confidence and enthusiasm are outstripped only by your eagerness to get to camera. Unfortunately, your credit card limit is $1,000 and the camera rental alone will take all that and more. Join us for a lively a nuts and bolts discussion about what every emerging producer and filmmaker needs to know before they yell “Roll camera!” This is Business Affairs 101 and although glamorous it ain’t, essential it is! 1:00PM | ARTIST TALK: Tom Sherman – Technology as Language: Cultural Engineering Begets Personal Humans NSCAD University Film School | 1649 Brunswick Street FREE Event More and more, people are comfortable comparing themselves with machines. We take pleasure in our relationships with intelligent artifacts. Technology is concrete language, the residue of redundant messages. Cultures are engineered, not grown. Personal humans still like to feel special. It is time to check on the advance of cybernetics–communication and control– and subsequent degrees of roboticism.

7:00PM | SCREENING: Janie Geiser: Animating the Uncanny Introduction by Filmmaker Janie Geiser Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General Janie Geiser’s films are elliptical, lush, and uncanny. Geiser – a performance, installation and puppet artist as well as an experimental filmmaker – creates teeming visual landscapes in which puppets, painted figures, found objects and moments of live action crowd together and float, superimposed, across one another. Richly layered sound collages provide striking counterpoint. The audiovisual density conjures submerged desires, fears, and questions that the conscious mind can only partially articulate. Geiser’s work delves into multiple pasts: the personal past of childhood, ruled by memory and forgetting; and an historical past of discarded objects, automata, and the tactility of the film medium. As the animate and inanimate rub shoulders, what emerges is a sense of the fragility and unpredictability of human bodies and minds.

9:00PM | SCREENING: WIFT‐AT Atlantic Women in Film Showcase Panel discussion and reception will follow this screening Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

Neither Science nor Magic (dirs. Krista Davis & Cari Tangedal, Nova Scotia, 8 min.) Numbskull (dir. Sandi Rankaduwa, Nova Scotia, 2:20 min.) Gothic Matriarch (dir: Cavelle MacDonnell, New Brunswick, 13 min.) Shadows and Sunshine (dir. Megan Wennberg, Nova Scotia, 8 min.) Snappy’s (dir. Caitlin Jane Parsons, Nova Scotia, 17 min.) A Night Out (dir: Heather Young, Nova Scotia, 10 min.) Ken, Fucked Up (dir. Ruby Boutilier & Sarah Byrne, Nova Scotia, 2012, 7:30 min.) Rebuild (dir. Rebecca Babcock, Nova Scotia, 19 min.)

SATURDAY APRIL 14 12:00PM | SCREENING: Recent Works from the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS) Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General

How To Get The Girl (dir. Ashlyn Anstee, 2011, Canada, 2:53 min.) Ooh La La, 2011 (dir. Sharon Kate, 2011, Canada, 1 min.) Wolves (dir. Rafael Sommerhalder, 2011, Switzerland, 3:59 min.) The Manifesto Edition (dir. Rune & Erik Eriksson, 2010, Norway, 10 min.) Sorry Film Not Ready (dir. Janet Perlman, 2010, Canada, 1 min.) Fitting In | (dir. Taylor Annistte, 2011, Canada, 2:34 min.) Spirit of the Bluebird (dir. Xstine Cook & Jesse Gouchey, 2011, Canada, 5:45 min.) Counting Sheep (dir. Neely Goniodsky, 2010, Canada, 5:30 min.) Paso Doble (dir. Jamie Metzger, 2011, Canada, 4:49 min.) Fester Goes Fishing (dir. Aaron Long, 2011, Canada, 6:41 min.) The Socking Truth (dir. Liza Leung, 2011, Canada, 1:59 min.) URS (dir. Moritz Mayerhofer, 2010, Germany, 10 min.) Something Left, Something Taken (dir. Max Prter & Ru Kuwahata, 2011, USA, 10:13 min.) Tara’s Dream (dir. Patrick Jenkins, 2011, Canada, 1 min.)

2:00PM | SCREENING: ” The Artist and The Process ” ‐ Robert Flaherty Film Seminar Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$8 General The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is the longest continuously running film event in North America. Named after Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Man of Aran, Louisiana Story) who is considered by many to be the father of documentary film, the seminar began in 1955 when Flaherty’s widow convened a group of filmmakers, critics, curators, musicians, and other film enthusiasts at the Flaherty farm in Vermont. The four films featured are selections from the seminar series over the years.

4:00PM | SCREENING: Where Love Is… Recent Experimental Works from Atlantic Canada Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$7 General From the transgressive to the sentimental, this program presents a diverse collection of innovative experimental work made by artists living in the Maritimes. Found footage is folded, layered and thrown into the wind in Jenna Marks’ Love, Nature and Collage, while Jeremy MacDonald maps out an apocalyptic archive from discarded VHS tapes in Living Artifacts. Slick digital technologies are used in David Clark and Nick Rudnicki’s kinetic dance splash‐ fest Bodies of Water and Lukas Hug’s animation Where is the Love . These films are followed by fragile 16mm hand‐processed landscape films by Phil Wolfe (Excited States) and Herb Theriault (Earthbound). Courtney Kelsey and Zach Barkhouse’s West of Neverfail is a graceful observational portrait of tugboat operators in the Port of Halifax. Greg Jackson continues this exploration of space and place with a fusion of new and old technologies in Halloween 1977. The Program concludes with the jarring, low‐fi tour de force Buggery by Winston De Giobbi, a shocking, innovative trash film from an exciting new voice from Nova Scotia’s underground film scene.

7:00PM | SCREENING: Tom Sherman ‐ Positioning Art in the Culture of Messaging Q&A with the artist will follow this screening Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Students/$8 General Tom Sherman is a naturalist of media environments. His current research examines the erosion of the vitality of art in cultures dominated by messaging (texting, voice messaging, instant messaging, e‐mail and social‐networking). How does one go about making messages that stick—that have residual effects–in an era of message abundance and disposability? If it is true that the future is all around us in the present moment, then part of the answer is determined through a speculation on the economies of attention, experience and existence.

9:00PM | HIFF2012 CLOSING RECEPTION with band WINDOM EARLE Bus Stop Theatre | 2203 Gottingen Street $5 Suggested Donation

TICKETS & LOCATIONS Tickets for the 2012 Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival are available at the AFCOOP offices (5663 Cornwallis Street in Halifax), or by phone at 902‐ 405‐4474 Extension #5 from Monday to Friday from 10:00AM until 5:00PM, and through this website. Payments may be made through Paypal or with Visa, Mastercard, Debit Card or cash. TICKET PRICES Individual Tickets $7 each General Admission or $5 for Students and Seniors (unless otherwise stated). Festival Passes $59 Admission to all Screenings and Events.

LOCATIONS For a list of event locations please visit the HIFF website at http://www.hiff.ca

HIFF REALLY WANTS TO BE LIKED

HIFF is seeking lively Tweeters, Facebookers, and Bloggers to help promote the lineup of great films and filmmakers at this year’s festival through social media.

Are you connected? Bring your iPhone, your Android, your Blackberry or your iPad and show us, and all those folks who are sitting at home, what you’ve got and what they’re missing.

When it’s all over, there will be prizes for Best Tweeter, Best Facebooker, Best Blogger, and Best Post.

For more information, or to let us know that you want to participate, please contact us at [email protected]

Twitter: #hiff2012 | Facebook: facebook.com/hiff2012

‐‐ MARTHA COOLEY | PROGRAMS AND MEMBERSHIP COORDINATOR | THE ATLANTIC FILMMAKERS COOPERATIVE