Thu Oct 2 | 9 PM
Gas Station Arts Centre
445 River Ave, at Osborne
★ Curated by Alexander Rogalski
Program duration: 69 mins
Followed by a filmmaker Q&A
20×25: One Take Retrospective
The first One Take Super 8 Event at WNDX was unforgettable. It had the atmosphere of a DIY punk show where everything could have gone terribly wrong, yet somehow didn’t. If you happened to be in Point Douglas at the Graffiti Gallery that night, you helped create the mythology that cemented the OTS8 into Winnipeg film lore. A packed warehouse for an experimental film screening where no one had yet seen a single frame of film created a wild energy. The following year was even more chaotic in a sweaty and loud Black Lodge studio. Fast forward two decades and the event still draws a passionate audience and the films continue to surprise. Hundreds of films have been launched to thousands of viewers, with many going on to be presented at festivals around the world.
This retrospective features 20 films made for past events at WNDX, Saskatoon and Regina – where it all began in 2000. After being excavated from attics, storage lockers, parents’ basements and parts unknown, this is a rare opportunity to see these films in their original format. In some cases, it’s only the second time they’ll have been projected. These works represent the range of creative approaches filmmakers have taken with the limitations of a single cartridge and no editing. It’s the eclectic nature of the films that make the events so unique, but the prairie voice that emerges is the tape splicing them together.
– Alexander Rogalski
Portage Place
Tiff Bartel | Manitoba
3:20 mins, super 8, 2019
An ironic look at Winnipeg’s Portage Place shopping mall, from its opening day on September 17, 1987, to what its close-to-final days in 2019.
Signs + Traces
James Pomeroy | Manitoba
3:10 mins, super 8, 2007
Signs + Traces is a portrait of the urban environment focusing on the ubiquitous sign as a physical / semiotic indicator that, for better or for worse, ties together and structures the urban social / physical environment. It also riffs on the many meanings of the term ‘signs.’
Michif Land-Based Knowledge
Robyn Adams | Manitoba
3:09 mins, super 8, 2023
Weaving shots of historical and contemporary Métis beadwork with flashes of prairie landscape and native plants, this film explores relationship to the land through a place-based tactile knowledge. Featuring beadwork from Lor Brand and Jennine Krauchi.
Solus
Kyath Battie | Saskatchewan
3:17 mins, super 8, 2023
A solitary sand wasp digs through shifting dunes, drawn towards an enigmatic dark prism.
Matchbox Weekend
Gerald Saul | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2015
A parody of Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend, Matchbox Weekend features an uninterrupted tracking shot of a traffic jam shot using toy cars. We all know that if Godard had had access to dinosaurs for his film, he’d have used them himself.
The Hunter Hunted
Mike Rollo | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2013
In search of a subject, I hunted. I found it in myself.
Karate Chops and Coffee Pots
Shakey Wilson | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2024
Bernard was having a lovely time on the farm until some coffee drinking golf kooks show up.
Singh
Sunny Sidhu | Manitoba
3:30 mins, super 8, 2010
Singh is an intimate look into the morning of a Sikh priest.
Spin
Heidi Phillips | Manitoba
3:04 mins, super 8, 2010
Filmmaker Heidi Phillips straps on the camera and spins her young niece and nephew around her, making for a dizzying parade of intervalometer imagery. The little actors fly across big skies and the backyard in all its overgrown, high-summer glory.
The Lovers
Jaye Kovach, Cat Haines | Saskatchewan
3:39 mins, super 8, 2021
Filmed over the course of a two day camping trip, The Lovers attempts to unpack t4t butch and femme aesthetics and love by exploring how two lovers see one another.
Classified
Ania Slusarczyk | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2018
Unearthed from the deepest vaults of science, Classified documents a scientist’s encounter with a thing. Performing a series of experiments to discover the thing’s properties, she edges towards the truth.
Clean
Danielle Sturk | Manitoba
2:56 mins, super 8, 2015
Clean connects a young girl’s entry into adulthood as not through growing autonomy, but through an abrupt and unwanted push into shame and silence.
Evil Exit Sequence
Travis Cole | Saskatchewan
3:17 mins, super 8, 2024
Now I know how men in exile feed on dreams.
*666
Abby Falvo | Manitoba
3:04 mins, super 8, 2024
Two curious women perform a ritual to make a call beyond the veil and discover that some calls are better unanswered.
Strong Son
Ian Bawa | Manitoba
3:14 mins, super 8, 2019
An endearing portrait of a South Asian father as he attempts to give life and marital advice to his bodybuilding and image-obsessed son. This autobiographical piece stars the director’s own father.
Sun Moon Stars Rain
Leslie Supnet | Manitoba
3:20 mins, super 8, 2008
An animated visual elegy, mourning the death of Mother Nature’s children.
Big Iron
Kieran Redmond | Manitoba
3:21 mins, super 8, 2022
Life’s a fast and dirty thing for a young outlaw who’s earned a reputation and killed to keep it. But a lawman’s come to town and the old-timers are shaking their heads. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, they said. The odds were only four-to-one.
Stay Frosty!
Derek Sandbeck | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2024
When a group of kids head out Christmas morning to build a snowman they unknowingly unleash a frozen evil. Wooooo scarrry.
HEAD
Colby Richardson | Manitoba
3:03 mins, super 8, 2019
Filmed in an underground concourse beneath Winnipeg’s famous Portage and Main intersection, HEAD structurally examines the often overlooked 360° concrete relief mural that spans the underground passageway.
Go Pop!
Eric Hill | Saskatchewan
3:20 mins, super 8, 2014
A competition between two men escalates out of control. Will one of them pop?
Down
Scott Fitzpatrick | Manitoba
3:30 mins, super 8, 2010
An elevator gets lost in an apartment complex, catching fleeting and often objectifying glimpses at the tenants that occupy its labyrinthine space. Down is interested in miniature-narrative and the possibilities/limitations of spatial orientation.