PERSONAL NON-FICTION (or: THIS IS NOT ABOUT BLAMING MY MOM)
To talk about your past can be a matter of relative risk, to try to give shape to the things that shape you. The eight films and videos in this block combine elements of diary and personal essay to explore identity, family, lineage and trauma. Sometimes it just feels good to talk things out, and it’s not always about blaming yr mom. New work from Canada, Thailand and the United States.
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Top Thrill dir. Grace Mitchell
2016 | US | 7 min | video | Canadian premiere
The vacillating sisterhood of a mother and daughter: Daughter gets her first period on a roller coaster in Ohio & Mother has an affair with a truck driver; their shared secrecy both bonds and entraps them. -GM
Object dir. Sydney Southam
2017 | CA | 6 min | video | Manitoban premiere
This video essay is a response to the artist’s experience working as a stripper. What began as a beautiful and exciting adventure quickly turned dark as the artist was criticized and ultimately fired for not having an augmented body. Object explores what happens to our relationship to our own bodies when performing professionally for the male gaze. -SS
81.92 dir. Matthew Wolkow
2017 | CA | 6 min | 16mm on video | Canadian premiere
81.92 is a structuralist inquiry into the notion of presence and absence as it reveals archival radio broadcasts from former Montreal radio host Mike Wolkow. -MW
601 Revir Drive dir. Josh Weissbach
2017 | US | 9 min | 16mm on video | Manitoban premiere
A series of spatial limits are defined while a maker imbibes. Interdependence is inherited after a substance cannot be shook. An animal carefully guards an outlined space as a river runs backwards. -JW
Destination Nowhere dir. Prapat Jiwarangsan
2018 | TH | 7.5 min | video | Canadian premiere
One day in Japan, a young man found out that a place he thought his only home country rejected him. Destination Nowhere is a mix between an artist’s process of making a new art work and a story about a young man who inspires the work. -PJ
beside the water, 1999-2003 dir. Finn Paul
2018 | US | 12 min | video | World premiere
Taking place during the early 2000s, a diaristic essay of sexual encounters and family dynamics, this film focuses on pleasure and the beautiful ways that trans people made life and meaning out of the world. -FP
kiln dir. Salamo Manetti-Lax
2018 | US | 4.5 min | video | World premiere
An experimental doc culled from footage I shot in high school in Upstate New York. A remembrance, a haunted collective portrait, and a critique. -SM
Becoming dir. Ariel Teal
2018 | US | 8 min | video | Canadian premiere
Embodying a body after trauma. Blowjobs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and memory are interwoven in attempt to find bodily autonomy and to process what has happened. -AT
In Association with the Winnipeg Film Group
