Cineworks recommends PRIMER, presented as part of Safe Assembly 2010.

You are invited to attend a screening of five short video works drawn from the Satellite Video Exchange Society/Video Out archive.

The works, all drawn from the early 1980s, provide varying sightlines into histories of Vancouver, politicized aesthetic practices, and other issues that haunt and inform the ongoing dialogues to be had in this current scene. This screening is our first act in February aimed to host and sustain such conversation. It is also meant to foreground and make use of the recent, lengthy efforts made to sustain and consolidate this archive–a wealth of material relevant to Vancouver's own creative and political history.

VIVO is greatly indebted to Crista Dahl and the many volunteers she has worked with for years to maintain the archive, and make it a resource accessible to the community. She will be in attendance to speak about the archive.

C.A.D.A. - Ay Sudamerica [4:00]
Ken Kuramoto - Persons Unknown [7:00]
Byron Black - B-84: Leaving the Ground [17:00]
Andreas Nieman - Our Noblest Aspirations [13:00]
Kim Tomczak - Vancouver Canada or They Chant Fed Up [23:00]

PRIMER
Thursday, 04 February, 7:30pm
VIVO [1965 Main Street]
Free

containR is a street installation at the nexus of video, public art and urban design, sitting at the cross roads of mountain and urban culture, art and sports cinema, embracing public art and sustainable design. By using reconditioned shipping containers integrating alternative energy sources, the installation references Vancouver’s rich history as a major port as well as a centre for green design.

containR opens at the SHAW Tower Court Yard (Thurlow/Cordova) in downtown Vancouver, February 12 through 28, 2010. containR is free and open to the general public from Noon - 7PM daily, with looped programming during open hours and live performances on the 27-28th. containR is an independent project presented by Springboard in partnership with Arts Partners in Creative Development, Bravo!FACT/CTV, Cineworks, SHAW, Host a City Happening Project, BCAC Unique Opportunities Grant, and EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society.

The following films are included:

Paper Shredders | 4:00 min | 2008 | Canada

Director: Dave Mossop & Rocky Mountain Sherpa Productions

Paper Shredders is a live action and animated visual adventure exploring the links between skiing, snowboarding and their water and dry land compatriots. Beautiful videography is interspersed with animation telling the story of one individual’s daydream of the mountains.

The Holy Mountain | 2:55 min | 1926 | Germany

Director: Arnold Fanck

The Holy Mountain was shot at the Atelier Staaken studio in Berlin, Germany, and on mountain locations in Switzerland. Segments chosen for containR are an incredible study of snow jumping and skiing as practiced in 1926. The film was reconstructed in 2001 from two prints held by Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and by Fondazione Cineteca Italiana.

Snowboarders | 2:36 min | 2009 | France

Director: David Coiffier

Dave Chappelle once remarked that hip-hop videos only looked good because they were shot in super slow motion. As the following video proves however, this statement holds true not only for jiggling breasts and spinning rims but for snowboarders as well. These images were shot with an I-Movix Sprintcam v1 for the experts. It’s mainly shot at 1000 frames per-second which gives both a myopic and poetic perspective to all the tricks in the pipe and the quarter.

Muybridge Piece | 0:50 min | 2008 | Israel

Video Director: Lavi Perchik | Archival photos: Eadweard Muybridge

Expressing music visually, the idea was to "paint" elements of Muybridge’s photographic sequences of human actions as if they were palettes of colors. Associatively matching Muybridge to music was a process akin to choosing the right tint of a color when painting. The notes in the music are generally played in a detached and distinctly separate manner, an articulation known as "staccato," just as Muybridge separates the flow of the human motion into distinct still images.

Olympia | 4:54 min | 1938 | Germany

Director: Leni Riefenstahl

Commissioned by the International Olympic Committee, Olympia was the first documentary film on the Olympic Games ever made. Controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who had made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will in 1934-35, created Olympia. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed, including unusual camera angles, smash cuts and extreme close-ups. These techniques later became industry standard. The film techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political content.

All in All | 5:00 min | 2003 | Norway

Director & Editor: Torbjørn Skårild

A man dives from a diving board. Through the use of rhythmic cuts, edits, sounds, and constantly changing perspectives, this video builds an almost cubist refraction of the simple act of diving into a pool of water. Gravity defied, a well-worn metaphor for freedom and joy, here the attempt itself the goal of the game. Beyond winning and losing, rhythm communicates and hypnotizes, like music, an abstract joy of repetition. And what danger lies below the surface if such weightlessness is achieved? Any kid can fly, few can land.

Beguine | 4:44 min | 2009 | The Netherlands

Directors: Douwe Dijkstra & Festina Lente Media

This cleverly animated and live action short is a music video of the song "Beguine," performed by electroacoustic, post-punk Dutch band, de Kift. Beguine journeys inward to explore the realm of quiet desperation thinly veiled by self-delusion, alcohol and a smile. Made by Festina Lente Media and Douwe Dijkstra. Based on a poem by Giza Ritschl (1869 - 1942).

A Day at the Office: The Runner | 3:58 min | 2006 | Canada

Director: Robert DeLeskie | Choreographers: David Danzon & Sylvie Bouchard

A day at the office. Five workers. Five fantasies. One incredible day at work. The secret fears, aspirations, and desires of five office workers take wing in flights of fancy during the course of a typical workday with humorous and poignant results. By the time 5 o’clock rolls around, nothing will ever be the same.

Her Morning Elegance | 3:35 min | 2009 | Israel/Berlin/NY

Director: Oren Lavie

Oren Lavie is a songwriter, director, and writer of funny books for sad children. Her Morning Elegance is a delightful exploration of movement captured via fragmented moments in time. The video animates the fantastic dream of a sleeping woman without ever leaving her bedroom, using her mattress as the canvas of the dream and the bed frame as the dolly of her journey.

Over 3,225 photographed still images are patched together through the visionary process of frame by frame animation. Her Morning Elegance is a YouTube sensation, with over 10 million viewers having seen it.

Advance | 2:00 min | 2009 | USA

Director: Mitchell Rose

Choreographers and Performers: Ashley Roland & Jamey Hampton

One dance. Two minutes. Fifty locations. Mitchell Rose is an American director of short films known for comedic work. He began his career as a choreographer and performance artist and became known as "the dance world's Woody Allen,” after being so dubbed by The New York Times. He then migrated to film and his works have won numerous awards. Music for Advance is by William Goodrum.

As I was Leaving My City | 3:30 min | 2007 | Iran

Director: Amirali Navaee

How does challenging political climate impact creativity? Navaee explores the pull between personal freedoms and cultural limitation. Is the lower half of a dancing man leaving his beloved city an objectification or personalization of the compromises made? He travels in the opposite direction of an arrow indicating that ‘heaven’ is the other way: follow his path as he dances out his answer.

Montevideoaki | 5:08 min | 2004 | Mexico/Spain/Uruguay/Japan

Director: Octavio Iturbe | Choreographer & Performer: Hiroaki Umeda

Against the dramatic city backdrop of Montevideo, Uruguay, Hiroaki Umeda’s fluid and subtle solo flickers against the hard lines of the buildings. A study of the human body in the urban landscape. The piece is based on Umeda’s solo for the stage While Going To a Condition. Octavio Iturbe, a Spain-based director and editor, is particularly known to the world audiences by his collaboration with Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus on the film Roseland.

Crutch | 4:00 min | 2006 | USA

Co-Directors: Sachi Cunningham & Chandler Evans

Choreographer & Performer: Bill Shannon

For eight years, filmmakers Sachi Cunningham and Chandler Evans followed Bill Shannon (aka Crutch Master) across the US and around the globe to record the story of his rise from an obscure street artist to an internationally acclaimed performer, choreographer and provocateur.

With over 300 hours of original footage, the filmmakers unravel a complex narrative about an ambiguously disabled, multi-disciplinary artist who defies both definition and gravity. This four-minute film represents a brief and inspiring glimpse into the mind-altering world of Crutch.

Skaterdater | 2:45 min | 1965 | USA

Director: Noel Black

An award-winning visual essay, Skaterdater is an early example of the skateboard movement and how it entered popular culture. This opening sequence excerpt from the longer, eighteen-minute film is an example of how sport can be re-imagined in media with visual flow and style. Academy Award Nominee - Live Action Short.

Human Skateboard | 0:32 min | 2008 | USA

Director: Michel Gondry - PES

Human Skateboard is a dynamic example of the collision of art and advertising. In this advertisement for Sneax skate shoes, rider and skateboard perform flips, jumps and acrobatics. In Human Skateboard, PES uses a process of pixilation where the human form is used as a stop motion prop. By highlighting the speed and the impact of the ride on the body, the viewer is given an impression of the effects of g-forces, the grind of the road surfaces, revealing both the danger and the exhilaration of the ride.

Ghost | 3:18 min | 2009 | Canada

Director, Choreographer & Editor: Patricia Kim

Inspired by urban culture, technology and martial arts, Ghost contrasts the human and the machine.  A contemporary dance film featuring one male dancer (Leif Nygaard), Ghost experiments with light and shadow, following one man’s struggle and determination to express the inexpressible that resides within us all.

Flow | 4:00 min | 2009 | The Netherlands

Director: Ruben Broekhuis

Flow depicts the art of free running against the backdrop of architectonic Rotterdam. Three free runners roam the deserted city with casual acrobatics to the rhythm of a rustic soundtrack.

SUBWAYS: 5 Variations on a Theme by Rilke | 11:30 min | 2006 | Canada

Director: Daniel Conrad | Choreographer: Crystal Pite

Filmed in the vast, exquisite subways of Prague and choreographed by Crystal Pite, Subways is based on a poem by Rilke about a caged panther at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. With performances by Canadian and Czech dancers, the film conjures a world of humans trapped underground, organizing and reorganizing in response to captivity.

Papiroflexia | 2:30 min | 2007 | USA

Director & Animator: Joaquin Baldwin

Papiroflexia (Spanish for ‘Origami’) is an origami tale of a skilful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands. Fred is a chubby man with a passion for paper folding, wanting to change the world with his art. Papiroflexia was originally written as a poem by Joaquin Baldwin, and later developed into an animated film at the UCLA Animation Workshop, with music by Nick Fevola.

Evelyn’s Farm | 8:10 min | 2009 | Canada

Director: Brian Johnson | Choreographers & Performers: Katy Harris-McLeod & Mara Branscombe - The Tomorrow Collective

Evelyn’s Farm is a dance film that explores distance, time, repetition, environment and human connection. The two female characters repeat sequences of movement in the stark landscape of a theatre, a vast open field framed by low mountains and a muddy river. Evelyn’s Farm lets the moving body be the story-teller and demonstrates the connection and separation between two individuals.

Slacklining | 2:15 min | 2005 | UK

Director & Producer: Posing Productions

Brace yourself for some mind-bending cinematography as Timmy O’Neil gets on the highwire – with footage taken from Return2Sender. Cutting edge on site rock climbing, spectacular high-wire slack lining, crazy B.A.S.E. jumping, expedition adventures and a climbing dog, this has the lot.

‘One of the best climbing films ever made.’ – Rock & Ice Magazine

Newton’s 3^rd | 3:00 min | 2008 | The Netherlands

Director: Bas Hesen

A short puppet-play between a dancer and a machine. But who is actually in control?

An animated short film that explores the teetering relationship between dance and heights.

Dust & Bones | 3:23 min | 2009 | USA

Producer: Freeride Entertainment

Dust & Bones is the final chapter in the epic saga known as New World Disorder. You’ll witness the ultimate throw down segment by Darren Berrecloth, unbelievable back flip combinations from Greg Watts and the new school styles of Graham Agassiz. Follow the Clump, Stumps and Jumps Tour as they jam the west coast and entertain a Giants baseball game from the Hell Barge in San Francisco Bay. Pile in the rest of the top freeriders, dirt jumpers and slopestylers and this world-class film will have you reeling.

Edison Motion Pictures: Bicycle Trick Riding no. 2 | 1:00 min | 1899 | USA

& Sandow | 1:16 min | 1899 | USA

Director: Thomas Edison

"I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion...." --Thomas A. Edison, 1888. These shorts are examples of the most common form of early filmmaking called ‘actualities,’ which are short non-fiction films. After the initial ten-year heyday of actualities, Edison and his contemporaries moved on to drama and comedy.

Innocence On Ice | 2:51 min | 2004 | Canada

Director: Astra Burke

A tribute to the movement and talent of figure skater Petra Burka, this short uses 1960s footage and original music inspired by the performance to create a moving design, etched on ice.

Innocence on Ice premièred at the Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video 2004, where it received an Honourable Mention for direction. “Using minimal resources, this film managed to recreate the innocence of sport from a very different time.” -Astra Burke

Figures | 3:00 min | 2010 | Canada | containR commission

Director: Miryam Bouchard

Commissioned by Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Cineworks and Arts Partners in Creative Development for containR 2010. Upon hearing about figure skating, my first thought was about ice. Water turned ice, water moving, flowing like the skater. It can be gracious and powerful. Before turning to ice, the water is alive. Before skating, the athlete puts on its uniform – it’s that moment that fascinates - the last intimate moment before a public performance.

Horses Never Lie | 4:48 min | 2003 | Canada

Director: Kathi Prosser | Choreographer & Performer: Caroline Richardson

Performer Caroline Richardson spent a year healing her back lying on the back of her horse. This sensual film delves into mythic concepts of metamorphosis as Richardson portrays the restless spirit of a horse trapped within a stable: fear - a personal journey inward; recovery - weakness becomes strength; and strength - the boundless reward of confronting and conquering fear. Winner of the 2003 American Choreography Award (Los Angeles).

Bataille de boules de neige | 0:50 min | 1896 | France

Director:  Louis Lumière

Louis (and brother Auguste) Lumière are credited with the world's first public film screening on December 28, 1895. The Lumière brothers are noted pioneers of both technical and creative attributes of the moving image, primarily taking scenes form everyday life. Bataille de boules de neige, shot in Lyon, is but one example of over 1,425 short films that the brothers produced, now considered seminal precursors to documentary filmmaking.

Sit On It | 5:39 min | 2010 | Canada | containR commission

Directors: Murray Siple & Christian Begin

Commissioned by Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Cineworks and Arts Partners in Creative Development for containR 2010. Sit On It features Canadian sit ski champion Josh Duek, the World Champion paralympic sit skier as he puts everything he is into winning gold at the 2010 Winter Paralympics. Filmmakers Siple and Begin capture the unbelievable speed and intensity of an athlete at the pinnacle of his ability. Sit On It reveals sit skiing in all it’s heart stopping velocity and awe inspiring technique, as the truly extreme sport that it is. Clocked at speeds reaching 120 kilometres an hour, it's Josh's confidence, courage, and fearless dedication to his sport that not only delivers the message of what is possible regardless of disability but powerfully demonstrates the true power of the Olympic spirit.

 “The only difference between possible and impossible is one’s attitude.” –Josh Dueck

Land | 3:44 min | 2007 | Canada

Director: Freya Olafson

Land is part of the New Icelander series, drawing parallels between cross-cultural experience of 19^th century ancestors with Olafson’s present-day identity; manipulating visual imagery and stories within this ‘saga.’  Land explores her ancestor’s settlement, Nes, along the Icelandic River in Manitoba. Nes became an unmarked graveyard for over 80 Icelanders who died of smallpox within the first years of settlement (1875-76). Upon a personal visit in 2006, Olafson was surprised to have direct encounters with unearthed graves and bones - gradually being dragged to the basin of the river. The imagery in Land is a result of this serendipitous connection with history resurfacing both symbolically and literally.

See What I See | 4:25 min | 2008 | Canada

Director: Runway Films

Runway Films is a snowboard video production company, rider-driven by the most influential female snowboarders in the world. With the momentum that the female snowboarding market has right now, Vancouver-based Runway Films was created to reach audiences internationally both in and out of the action sports industry.

Rugby & Jelly | 2:55 min | 2009 | France

Director: David Coiffier

Dave Chappelle once remarked that hip-hop videos only looked good because they were shot in super slow motion. As the following video proves however, this statement holds true not only for jiggling breasts and spinning rims but for bouncing jelly shots and sporting events as well. These images were shot during the 2008 O’Neill Evolution in Davos with an I-Movix Sprintcam v1 for the experts. It’s mainly shot at 1000 frames per-second which gives both a myopic and poetic perspective to the match.

Falling | 5:54 min | 2010 | Canada | containR commission

Directors: Marlene Millar & Philip Szporer

Choreographer & Performer: Jeff Hall

Commissioned by Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Cineworks, Main Film and Arts Partners in Creative Development for containR 2010. Based on the true events of Jeff Hall’s journey after taking a life changing fall that left him unable to walk, and his subsequent fight to regain his physicality, Falling gives us a peek into the emotion, the struggle and the pure intent of focus that can bring a man back from such an event. Yet it cannot help but its leave its mark, the man is indelibly changed, and the story is forever written in the body. The film celebrates this history of the body, the challenge of losing then re-finding movement, and the subversive, absurd and sometimes tragic ways physicality weaves itself through our lives.

Jeff Hall is a Canadian contemporary choreographer known for blending spectacular athleticism with artistic eclecticism and bringing humor, dialogue, and physical performance together on stage.

Outside In | 14:10 min | 1993 | UK

Director: Margaret Williams | Choreographer: Victoria Marks

Outside In is an unusual kind of journey along tracks and pathways both real and imaginary. It is a voyage of discovery and surprises; a witty and affectionate exploration of physicality, identity and movement that transforms our understanding of dance. Featuring the Candoco Dance Company.

Drop ‘till you Shop: Freestyle Bowling | 4:53 min | 2008 | Canada

Directors: Frédérick Pelletier & Olivier Tétreault

This playful Bravo!FACT film features the antics of Montréal-based dance group, Les 7 Doigts de la Main, as they move in without announcement and take over a bowling alley. In amidst the performance of incredible acrobatics with bowling balls, very passable bowling seems to take place, winning over even the purists in the alley’s patrons. 

Girls Fencing Practice in Croatia | 1:06 min | 1944 | Croatia

Director Unknown

Historical footage of unknown origin depicting the ‘rigor’ of fencing classes for women in 1944. A beautiful and unintentional choreography unfolds within every movement, duplicated tenfold by the class as they prepare and fence in incidental synchronization. 

Gold Diggers of 1933: Pettin’ in the Park | 1:11 min | 1932  | USA

Director: Mervyn LeRoy | Choreographer: Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley is one of the founders of dancefilm, with his elaborately choreographed sequences for dancers that are found in many of the big Hollywood studio films from the 1930s and 1940s. He was particularly famous for his overhead ‘kaleidoscope’ effect, seen in this excerpt from ‘Pettin’ in the Park,’ a song and dance number featuring a snowball fight. Gold Diggers of 1933 is one of the best showcases of his outrageously lavish choreography, seemingly endless chorus lines, fluid camera work and dizzying overhead compositions.

Hockey T’Nite | 2:12 min | 2010 | Canada | containR commission

Director: Mark Adam

Commissioned by Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Cineworks and Arts Partners in Creative Development for containR 2010. Hockey T’Nite presents an immaculately shot, ‘first person’ perspective of the world of Hockey as seen from the ice. This community-based boys’ hockey league is treated by the camera reminiscent of vintage broadcasts of ‘Hockey Night in Canada.’

Supermundane | 3:31 min | 2010 | Canada | containR commission

Director: Kathleen Smith

Commissioned by Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Cineworks and Arts Partners in Creative Development for containR 2010. This brief film is a meditation on the mundane, repetitive aspects of training the body and one woman’s drive to transcend the mundane and achieve perfection. The perfect moment, the perfect line, the perfect run – it’s all in a day’s work. It was shot in the Rocky Mountains near Lake Louise.

Snow | 8:00 min | 2003 | UK

Director: David Hinton in collaboration with Rosemary Lee

Archival footage of winter antics from the 1890s to the 1960s is cut and re-combined to create a rhythmic choreography of gesture and action, on the slippery sidewalks and slopes of a bygone era. Originally commissioned by Arts Council England, the BBC and NPS for the last Dance for the Camera series, the film is created from fragments of black and white archive footage from the 1890s to 1960s of ordinary people moving on the snow or ice.

Edison Motion Pictures: Hockey Match on the Ice | 0:36 min | 1898 | USA

Director: Thomas Edison

"I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion..." --Thomas A. Edison, 1888. These shorts are examples of the most common form of early filmmaking called ‘actualities,’ which are short non-fiction films. After the initial ten-year heyday of actualities, Edison and his contemporaries moved on to drama and comedy.

The Sweater | 10:21 min | 1980 | Canada

Director: Sheldon Cohen

In the 1940s, in the rural village of Saint Justine, Quebec, listening to the hockey game on the radio was a Saturday night tradition... and so was rooting for the Montreal Canadiens. The boy in the story outgrows his hockey sweater, so his mother writes to ‘Mr. Eaton’ for a new one. But instead of the coveted red, white and blue of Les Canadiens, the company sends a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.

Flame | 4:00 min | 2010 | Canada

Director: John Bolton

A unique collaboration between athletes, musicians and film artists, Flame is a classical music hockey film by John Bolton, based on the composition ‘Flame’ by composer Jordan Nobles, as performed by the Turning Point Ensemble, and featuring the 2009-2010 University of British Columbia Women’s Hockey Team.

Limited Ice Time | 1:07 min | 2009 | USA

Icing the Puck | 1:30 min | 2009 | USA

Director: Mike Conti

Mike Conti straps on his shoulder pads, tightens up his laces and prepares for the game of his life. Teammates nowhere in sight, coach gone AWOL, this solitary player insists on a game whether he's skating the biggest ice in the land or he's bringing his own. Just one more slapshot, ice time is at a premium in this land where the clock runs on glacial time. These short videos undermine the myths of both Alaska and the Sports Hero. The player’s choice of venue makes no sense, and like Buster Keaton he strives against the impossible to sad and comic results.

The Competitionist | 0:45 min | 2003 | USA

Lee Walton

Lee Walton spends an afternoon at the track and competes with the locals. Often regarded as an Experientialist, Walton’s work takes many forms- from drawings on paper, game/system based structures, video, web-based performances, public projects, theatrical orchestrations and more.

See more information about the project here: www.containr.com

Cineworks is excited to support Safe Assembly 2010, in collaboration with VIVO Media Arts.

Since 1973, VIVO Media Arts Centre (aka Video In, aka Satellite Video Exchange) has facilitated an archive of dissent. Providing a space for dialogue and community building is the core of our ambition. In order to preserve our history as a place for artists to engage in a culture of critical action, VIVO has chosen not to participate in the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. We intend to use the clarity of our position outside of this spectacle to operate as a hub for analysis, skill sharing, production, and collaboration. We want to create a space for artists to consider their own production in relation to the events and systems around them. The forms this questioning will take are speculative. For some this will involve bearing witness with camera or microphone, for others it will be a period of digestion, a time to observe, create questions, and build an understanding. We look forward to asking how might we act politically? Given the polemical nature of this time, how do we move beyond didacticism, to produce new thought and action? For others who have always taken the open, subtlety of art for granted, we look to precedents, to those who have not shied from the term political artist. We can use this moment to examine the tropes of the past, and produce a solidarity that branches into personal practice or opens to produce new forms of collaboration.

While the Olympics clothe aggressive urban restructuring with a party, privileging an atmosphere of celebration over adverse political-economic effects upon local communities, we want to engage the cultural logic that justifies its continued development despite grave social costs. The power of artistic discourse to intervene in this process—registering dissent, producing new forms of protest, and amplifying its meaning—is its use value. Art opens thought, complicates the official story, and articulates a lineage of solidarity — it functions as both a force of heterogeneity and lasting register of political impressions. Long after the event is over, cultural expressions continue to emerge, as markers of the time, and reflections of individual and collective experience. We might challenge the old antagonisms and use the energy of this moment to facilitate a new start, simultaneously building a community to produce this shift.

AFTERNOON SCHOOL consists of both planned and spontaneous seminars, with examples of skill sharing, media activism, screenings from the Video Out archive with its rich history of protest in Vancouver, and discussions using critical theory and contemporary art to produce a counter-public. Click here for more information.

The EVENING NEWS is a series of discussions and presentations that will include a forum for participants and audience members to show highlights and ephemera from what they have gathered throughout the day. These presentations will contribute to a larger conversation and archive around the cultural meaning and social impact of the Olympics. Click here for more information.

We will be operating a RADIO transmitter during the last two weeks of February. Our signal will also be streaming online. Our range will be humble, and thus situated.

The SOCIAL PROPAGANDA MIXING MACHINE is an open call for participants to create sound or image propaganda. Click here for more information.

COVERING UP will be a street action photo/video-documentation project.

We also invite people to collaborate with our performance troupe, THE WHITE PILLOWS, to create responses to the day-to-day tensions of the event and site-specific performances that deal with public presence.

SAFE ASSEMBLY 2010 intends to facilitate cultural expressions that arise from the community in a lineage of solidarity. If you are interested in participating please come visit us this month.

SAFE ASSEMBLY
12-28 February 2010
VIVO Media Arts Centre [1965 Main Street]
Free

Afternoon School, presented as part of Safe Assembly 2010, in partnership with VIVO Media Arts, consists of both planned and spontaneous seminars, with examples of skill sharing, media activism, screenings from the Video Out archive with its rich history of protest in Vancouver, and discussions using critical theory and contemporary art to produce a counter-public. Curated by cheyanne turions and Lois Klassen.

All events take place at VIVO Media Arts Centre, located at 1965 Main Street.

Monday, 15 February 2010, 2pm

SCREENING THE OLYMPIC CITY: VANCOUVER 2010 AND DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE
Presented by Angela Piccini

Downtown Eastside, Four Host First Nations, developer dreams, "the best place on earth." Screen practices produce specific experiences of Vancouver as an Olympic City. They present the city as material, yet it is a city performed by particular affective presences and haunting absences. In this lecture I will discuss current research that investigates the multiple Vancouvers in play across screens in the run-up to the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympic Games.

My investigation responds to the history of the modern Olympic Games, which have relied heavily on entanglements between antiquity and urban modernity made possible through the use of camera-based technologies. German excavations at Olympia were reopened in preparation for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and archaeology became the ground upon which fascist Aryan bodily aesthetics were constructed, enacted and celebrated in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938). The Olympic torch relay in China began its final approach to Beijing from Zhoukoudian, a UNESCO heritage site famous for its Peking Man, while film director Zhang Yimou’s Beijing opening and closing ceremonies expressed his trademark heritage-cinema aesthetic. Between Berlin and Beijing, Olympic Games organizers have worked with filmmakers to harness the material heritage of the nation to market the mega-event through documentary practices. These bring the archaeological imaginations of the nation state into the urban spaces of Olympic host cities, performatively spatializing global and local, nationalist and multi-national neoliberal, past and present.

To what extent is this played out in Vancouver? The 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games presents the city at a time of economic and political flux. Documentary filmmakers have largely been excluded from funding strands as the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee has commissioned screenworks within either corporate promotional or visual arts contexts or has focused on user-generated content through the Canada CODE initiative. Tracing examples that blur distinctions between documentary and experimental practices, I will explore the moving image aesthetics of an Olympic city to consider the present absence of the material past and the city’s fear of remembering.

ANGELA PICCINI is a Lecturer in Screen Studies and Head of Education in Drama: Theatre, Film, Television at University of Bristol. Her work investigates place and visual culture and the dialogue between fact and fiction produced by the documentary impulse. Specifically, she continues to be interested in the ways in which the materialized traces of the past circulate through contemporary and historic screen practices.

Tuesday, 16 February 2010, 2pm

REACT2010
presented by Jennifer Pickering

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, based in Kelowna BC, is engaging artists and the global community in a creative cultural conversation about the values surrounding the Olympics. REACT2010.com is a dynamic medium for creative expression that will lead to an examination and appreciation of diverse cultural values. Utilizing mediums of choice, the Alternator has invited artists to react to the values they see expressed in the Olympic Games. REACT2010.com will provide a platform to display their art-based responses to the world.

JENNIFER PICKERING is the director of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art.

BRACKEN H’ANUSE CORLETT is a multimedia/mixed-media/mixed-blood artist hailing from the Wuikinuxv and Klahoose Nations. He works in film/video, sound and performance as well as traditional and contemporary visual art. He has worked for Redwire Native Youth Media as a writer and is a graduate of the En’owkin Centre. He also volunteers for the Ullus Collective, a media arts group in the Okanagan. The focus of his work is cultural reclamation, rebirth and decolonization. He hopes to pass on what he has learned to the next generation.

JEREMY OWEN TURNER lives in Vancouver where he is pursuing a Masters of Interactive Arts at Simon Fraser University. Turner is a performance artist, curator, theorist and music composer in virtual worlds. In 2006, he co-founded Second Front in Second Life and was also curator of the Second Live exhibition as part of the LIVE 2007 Biennial of Performance Art in Vancouver.

JUDY CHEUNG received her undergraduate visual arts degree from the University of Calgary and an MFA degree from the Pratt Institute, New York. Cheung's work has been exhibited across Canada, USA, Europe, as well as in Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2006 her on-going project, "Love is in the Air- SkyLink" was shown at the Havana Biennial in Cuba, and her solo exhibition, freeLink, was staged at the Surrey Art Gallery. Cheung currently lives in Vancouver.

Video is at the core of BRIAN GOTRO’s practice. His single-channel tapes and installation works activate qualities of the ephemeral, comedic, social and political. Turning the camera on his self and those around him Gotro engages in both critique and examination of portrait and surrounding.

JAMES MASZ is are-emerging multi-disciplinary artist and electronic musician currently residing in Vancouver.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 2pm

HOST CITY
Presented by Heather Cosidetto and Stefan Morales

Heather Cosidetto and Stefan Morales will explore the meaning of the "host city."  The city of Vancouver hosts its ever-present and ever-changing guests in ways that house a handful here, a handful there, but never all and every one.  How might a discursive shift from analysis preoccupied with the man made world (e.g. social, political, cultural) to one where biological and ecological themes reign predominant, enable a more intimate understanding of the relationships between guests and hosts? Expanding the question to include the region that Vancouver finds itself within, they ask: in what ways does the host city behave as a guest in its wider environs?

HEATHER COSIDETTO is an artist, writer and educator based in BC. She holds a BFA in Integrated Media from Emily Carr and an MA in Culture, Science, and Technology from Goldsmiths University in London. She has recently returned from a stint in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, where she was Program Director at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. Her current research is on the representation of food and farming.

STEFAN MORALES holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Victoria, and is currently working towards completion of his Master's Degree in Political Science from Acadia University, NS. His current research focuses on the scientific, political and cultural intrications of the soil food web.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 4pm

INDIGENOUS WOMEN RESISTING
presented by Cherry Smiley

A discussion about prostitution, colonization, and Indigenous women before, during, and after the Olympic games.

CHERRY SMILEY is an abolitionist, activist and feminist.  She is a collective member of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, an organization that is an independent voice against injustice to Aboriginal women.  AWAN began in November 1995 as a result of concerns about the hierarchical and patriarchal power structures which can serve to silence Aboriginal women.  Most recently, AWAN has taken a stand against the total decriminalization or legalization of prostitution.

Thursday, 18 February 2010, 2pm

THOUGHT ON FILM XXV
presented by cheyanne turions

A monthly reading + discussion group, Thought on Film aims to promote critical thought around film product and practice through community-based discussion. Open to the public, Thought on Film fosters the close reading of texts confronting issues in contemporary, cutting-edge cinematic practice and philosophy.

As part of Safe Assembly’s Afternoon School program, February’s meeting will feature the Graham McFee and Alan Tomlison’s essay “Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Ideology and Aesthetics in the Shaping of the Aryan Athletic Body,” originally published in 1999 in the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Using as texts Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia films, and related aspects of Triumph of the Will, McFee and Tomlinson explore how forms of representation, which record and relay historical moments, are retrospectively understood on the basis of a mixture of deference and irreverence, and judged in terms of particular political or aesthetic dynamics. Considering the fact that Riefenstahl’s films were made as part of the Nazi propaganda machine yet function as important moments in the history of cinema, Thought on Film will examine how political mechanisms can function in art works and vice versa. Contemplating the retrospective evaluation of Riefenstahl’s films as documents of the 1936 Summer Olympics, we will imagine a speculative history of this, Vancouver’s Winter Olympic moment, through the artistic responses that are just now taking shape.

CHEYANNE TURIONS is the Programs Manager + Curator at Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society.

Friday, 19 February 2010, 2pm

COOL RUNNINGS: THE DISNEYIFICATION AND RACIALIZATION OF THE WINTER GAMES
Presented by Kevin M. Rowe

The film Cool Runnings provides an ample example of the process of the Disneyfication of the real life dramas that unfold during international sporting events such as the 1988 Olympics in Calgary Alberta where a Jamaican bobsleigh team made its debut. This film, while both softening and over dramatizing the actual events, espouses the mythologies of "blackness" through a process of producing and reproducing the black body and mind. This lecture will draw on sources from history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics and cultural studies to discuss the "whitening" of the Winter Games.

Starting with a discussion of the film Cool Runnings this lecture will problematize the general notions of race, and race in sport. We will then look at how Disneyfication comes into play in the spread of these black myths, instigating a discussion of the racialization of the present Winter Games by questioning issues such as the promotion of diaspora and multiculturalism within the Games themselves. The aim is to keep ajar the critical discourses of race and sport up to and including what Rowe will call an Olympic cultural imperialism that is based on a racist and hierarchical trialectic of the Occidental over the Oriental and Meridional.

KEVIN M. ROWE was born in Calgary Alberta where he spent much of his time consorting with all the right and wrong types. He left Calgary after graduating from an alternative high school and thought to come coastward to try his hand at film. Film and Kevin did not make swell bedfellows. Later under threat, or it could have been a bet, from a partner in love, he decided again to attend College. He found himself studying in geography, an addict of space. Graduating in 2009 with a B.A. in geography from Simon Fraser University and several years experience in community development as the coordinator for the Community Access Program Youth Initiative he found himself looking forward to continuing his studies in geography. His main interests are with geophilosophy, violence and space, gender and space, Marxist and radical geographies, and in anarchism. He also likes to play football (soccer) and ride bicycles.

Monday, 22 February 2010, 2pm

FRAGMENTED GEOGRAPHIES
Presented by Natalie Ethier

Fragmented Geographies will explore psychogeography, dérive/drift, and the right to the city to raise questions around contested spaces, constructed landscapes and temporal infrastructure created by and for Vancouver 2010.  Participants will be invited to create memory maps of the city, tracing their routes through it to show how mobility is affected by the current global spectacle.  At the end, instructions on how to conduct a dérive through the city will be given.

A geographer and advocate for pedestrian-scale development, NATALIE ETHIER is interested in the connections between urban form, perception, and experience of place, and how these influence movement through cities. With her project Pedestrian City she encourages people to share memory maps as a way to make connections between the places and interactions they experience in a neighbourhood; things they've noticed but maybe never put together in the same mental space.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010, 2pm

THE APPEARANCE OF ACTIVISM
Presented by Rob Stone

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”
-Friedrich Engels
 
Quite what was meant by Engels with his famous sentence? During this lab session we will think about differing practices of activism and the political realm for art. Looking first at examples from Paris in the mid-nineteenth century, Britain and Germany in the 1930s we will consider the ways that the poetics of political organization and gesture were rethought and refined by movements in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. We will consider the figured activity of the contemporary activist. And ask: What are the roles of structure and disguise in this? How do allusion, mockery and earnestness function? What is the role of the witness participant? Need the activist be responsible?
 
Recently theories of art practice have focused on the ways that unwarranted, even eccentric sociabilities have occupied the centre stage for many forms of art process during the past decade. We will talk about the role art has taken in shaping collectivity, and explore the powerful productiveness of fallibility.

ROB STONE is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Art at Middlesex University and Adjunct Professor with the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. His current research interests are in sound, architecture and the aesthetics of modern sociability. He has published widely exploring and theorizing these and other areas of at practice and cultural sensibility. His book Auditions: Architecture and Aurality is soon to be published by MIT Press.

Wednesday, 24 February 2010, 2pm

STRUCTURE OF RELIEF: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART AND ETHICS
presented by Kristina Lee Podesva

Structure of Relief departs from a paper and artwork presented by Podesva at "Speaking Truth to Reconciliation" (Artspeak, 2009). For this session, she will consider the ethical, political, and aesthetic by examining the who, the what, and the how of art, ultimately inviting participants to articulate and puzzle through the relationship between art and ethics.

KRISTINA LEE PODESVA is a Vancouver-based artist, writer, and editor of Fillip. She was the founder of colourschool, a free school dedicated to the speculative and collaborative research of five colours; white, black, red, yellow, and brown, and was the inaugural artist in residence at the Langara Centre for Art in Public Spaces. Her work and texts have appeared in exhibitions, screenings, and projects in Canada, the United States, and Europe. 

Wednesday, 24 February 2010, 4pm

LIFE INSIDE THE PLEASURE DOME: OLYMPISM, TOURISM AND THE FUTURE OF VANCOUVER
presented by Max Fawcett

While Team Canada’s athletes may have their collective eyes set on winning gold, the ambitions of the politicians, business leaders, games officials, and other interests aligned behind the 2010 Winter Olympics are focused squarely on a different kind of gold. The games, they hope, will introduce Vancouver to the rest of the world, with television personalities like NBC’s Matt Lauer playing the role of the trustworthy chaperone. That introduction, meanwhile, will lead to a lucrative long-term relationship between international visitors, investors, and the city of Vancouver’s tourism industry.

Two weeks of fawning coverage of our city’s natural beauty, first-class restaurants, and other tourist-friendly amenities by the assembled members of the international press would be a winning performance for Olympic organizers and the business interests that have underwritten their efforts, although the absence of snow on the local mountains, a forecast full of unrelenting dreariness, and a noticeably agitated local population may yet prevent that dream from being realized. Yet even if the weather, the snow-making machines, and the locals co-operate long enough to allow VANOC’s massive public relations machine to do its job, the benefits that might result from their efforts will flow far more naturally in the direction of the city’s corporate interests rather than that of the millions of people who actually have to make a life and a living in Vancouver.

After all, while a post-Olympic boom in Vancouver’s already bustling tourist industry might be good news in the short-term, its effect on the longer-term view is decidedly less rosy. A further expansion of Vancouver’s already bloated tourism and service industries would mark an acceleration of the transformation that has been afoot in Vancouver since Expo ’86, one that has seen the city aggressively re-brand itself as a “world-class tourist destination.” If that transformative process continues, the traces that still remain, both physically and culturally, of Vancouver’s history as a functioning (and functional) city will slip still further into our collective rear-view mirror.

In their place are the foundations for a reinvention of the city as a pleasure-dome, a recreational venue for the world’s rich and famous like the one that Fritz Lang portrayed over eighty years ago in his 1927 silent film Metropolis. Lang’s film and the messages contained within it will be used to illuminate the risks associated with this aggressive re-imagination of the city of Vancouver. Will Vancouver finally return to the difficult work of creating a meaningful local economy that is capable of producing real jobs that pay real incomes, or will it continue its metamorphosis into an international playground for the rich and famous? Will it be a city where those without access to trust funds or winning lottery tickets can afford to buy a home and maintain a reasonable standard of living, or one where locals are pushed inexorably to the city’s economic, cultural, and even physical periphery? These are questions that desperately need to be asked, and soon, before it’s too late.

MAX FAWCETT is a freelance journalist, itinerant blogger, aspiring polemicist, and most recently the editor of the Chetwynd Echo, a weekly newspaper serving the small northern B.C. community of Chetwynd. His latest musings and links to previously published work can be found at www.maxfawcett.com.

Thursday, 25 February 2010, 2pm

HABITAT ISLAND AND OTHER SITES FOR DISRUPTION
presented by Holly Schmidt

Holly Schmidt will explore the potentially transformative power of art interventions in the built environment in relation to the South East False Creek/Olympic Village development.

She will explore the recent development of South East False Creek through the work of Vancouver writer and critic, Derek Simons.  Using his examination of interstitial spaces and the contingency of present day development as a point of departure to explore concepts of democracy, plurality and public space as presented by art theorist Rosalyn Deutsche.  She emphasizes that how we understand and visualize public space is related to how we understand the social and political relations among people.  Schmidt will introduce a range of intervention works that highlight the potential role artists can play when intervening into public spaces such as South East False Creek/Olympic Village.

HOLLY SCHMIDT is a media arts candidate in the Masters of Applied Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.  In recent years she worked collaboratively with computer scientist, Uta Hinrichs in the Interactions Lab at the University of Calgary to create interactive touch table installations. These works are part of a broader orientation towards transdisciplinary research-based collaborations that explore emergence and uncertainty in human and nonhuman relations.  She has exhibited and presented nationally and internationally at the Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2010 Conference at M.I.T, Cambridge, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, the 2007 Computational Aesthetics Conference, Banff Centre, the Visningrommet, Bergen, Norway and MAD Emergent Art Centre, Eindhoven, Netherlands. 

Thursday, 25 February 2010, 4pm

FREDERICK WISEMAN'S ASPEN
presened by Donato Mancini

Aspen is a film about a town famous in the 19th century for silver mining and now known for its scenic splendor, mountains, skiing, hiking, music, intellectual activity and fashionable people. The film documents the daily life and activities of the people who live, work, visit and play in Aspen in the winter. Aspen is topical for an Olympics-besieged city, as it is about the highly elite skiing resort of Aspen. An amazing, revealing, et cetera (adjectives agglutinate....) montage of millionaires at play that makes starkly visible the class character of winter sports. If ever they were in doubt. Mancini will introduce the film screening and the audience is encouraged to stay for discussion and analysis of the film to follow.

DONATO MANCINI is a Toronto-born, Hamilton-raised, and Vancouver based-resident who performs as a writer, visual artist and polymath.

Friday, 26 February 2010, 2pm

NATIONALISM: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
presented by Lisa Baroldi

War, discrimination, racism, genocide, and the rise of the Far-Right are products of nationalism–the bad and the ugly kind. Can nationalism produce good?  Malcolm X equated nationalism to freedom from the grip of an oppressive hegemony and rallied a Black Nation in the Sixties. Québeckers hit the streets to celebrate when Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognized Québec as a Nation, and opposition leaders followed suite (with conditions).  I, along with millions of others, wore red and white to cheer on Canadians as they ran the Olympic torch. Good? Is it ever good to create the “other” in defining self, in feeling unified, in making change? Can it be avoided?  Join me in a conversation about nationalism. What does it mean? How is it expressed? Why does it matter? Why does it matter right now as your nation races my nation down a mountain that my nation has butchered to be a better Olympic host than your nation ever was? 

Nationalism is an emotion and a tool. It’s “ethnic,” “civic,” “black,” “white,” “orange.”  Qualify it as you like. It still creates borders and boundaries. Nationalism is about identity…and difference…and superiority. But it’s also about togetherness. This Afternoon School is an exploration. Come with curiosity, questions, and ideas. Come with images, clips, quotes, songs, and stories about nationalism.  Let’s learn together. Arts 'n crafts included.

LISA BAROLDI has been interested in the multi-faceted nature of nationalism for over a decade. As a student, she studied Far-Right movements in Europe and was living in France at the peak of Le Pen’s ascent. In 2002, she attended a Western Canadian Concept meeting in Leduc, Alberta to delve into the psyche of western alienation and separatism in an attempt to better grasp what makes Canada, Canada. When it comes to national cultural identity, anywhere at anytime, Lisa is particularly interested in how it is expressed through food and drink (wine), and other cultural expressions, goods, and services. A section of Lisa’s MA thesis on Canada’s decision to pursue the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was published in a textbook on Canadian foreign policy. The quest to maintain a sense of Canadianness through cultural policy and “Canadianness“ itself intrigue her. Nationalism is at the core of a lot of her past projects and will likely be creeping into her future endeavours.

MONTHLY READING + DISCUSSION GROUP EXPLORING CINEMA + CINEMATIC PRACTICE THROUGH WRITTEN WORDS

A monthly reading + discussion group, Thought on Film aims to promote critical thought around film product and practice through community-based discussion. Open to the public, Thought on Film fosters the close reading of texts confronting issues in contemporary, cutting-edge cinematic practice and philosophy.

As part of Safe Assembly’s Afternoon School program, February’s meeting will feature the Graham McFee and Alan Tomlison’s essay “Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Ideology and Aesthetics in the Shaping of the Aryan Athletic Body,” originally published in 1999 in the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Using as texts Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia films, and related aspects of Triumph of the Will, McFee and Tomlinson explore how forms of representation, which record and relay historical moments, are retrospectively understood on the basis of a mixture of deference and irreverence, and judged in terms of particular political or aesthetic dynamics. Considering the fact that Riefenstahl’s films were made as part of the Nazi propaganda machine yet function as important moments in the history of cinema, Thought on Film will examine how political mechanisms can function in art works and vice versa. Contemplating the retrospective evaluation of Riefenstahl’s films as documents of the 1936 Summer Olympic games, we will imagine a speculative history of this, Vancouver’s Winter Olympic moment, through the artistic responses that are just now taking shape.

Experimenting with the form of reading groups and their discussions, this month’s selection will be read out loud by participants. No pre-reading required!

If you have any questions about Thought on Film, please do not hesitate to contact Programs Manager + Curator cheyanne turions at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

THOUGHT ON FILM XXV
reading Graham McFee and Alan Tomlinson's essay "Riefenstahl's Olympia: Ideology and Aesthetics in the Shaping of the Aryan Athletic Body"
Presented as part of Safe Assembly's Afternoon School program
VIVO Media Arts Centre [1965 Main Street]
Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 2pm
Free

Position Type: Full-time contract, 37.5 hours/week, flexibility required
Application Deadline: 26 February 2010, 6pm
Years Experience: 2+
Salary: $35,000/year + benefits

Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society is seeking an outstanding, highly motivated arts professional to step into the role of Programs Manager + Curator. Supporting the creative vision and priorities of the organization, this includes [but is not limited to] producing an annual series of exhibitions, cinematic salons and workshops.

Cineworks was formed to promote and encourage the production, distribution and exhibition of independent film in British Columbia. Functioning, in part, as a production co-operative, Cineworks now provides its members with the production equipment and facilities, information related support structures and environment necessary to produce independent media art. Cineworks arranges and presents public exhibitions and discussions aimed at increasing film awareness and knowledge, encouraging the growth of film analysis.

RESPONSIBILTIES:

Develop comprehensive plans for all aspects of programs delivery, up to three years in advance, including the curation of exhibitions;

Research and identify potential funding sources and develop program proposals;

Provide reports to the Executive Director on programs and services for use in funding applications and strategic planning;

Oversee the implementation of programs, policies and operations on a day-to-day basis;

Develop and manage programs budget;

Develop publicity materials and media campaigns;

Manage logistics required for exhibitions, salons and workshops;

Chair the Program Advisory Committee, including calling meetings, setting agendas, and preparing reports from meetings [the Program Advisory Committee is appointed by the Board on an annual basis and meets as needed or at least twice a year];

Conduct orientation sessions for potential new members.

QUALIFICATIONS:

The Programs Manager + Curator will be an energetic self directed person with superb oral and written communication skills, in addition to proven financial management abilities. Prior successful grantwriting experience is strongly preferred. The successful candidate will have graduated from a post-secondary educational institution with extensive knowledge in media art practices, including practicing artists, historical developments, and current trajectories in critical issues influencing the field. A special interest in celluloid is desired. Significant experience in all aspects of developing and delivering programs is essential. The Programs Manager + Curator will be well versed in basic computer applications [preferably on a Mac platform]. Familiarity with Photoshop and web applications is an asset. The ideal candidate will be able to prioritize and meet deadlines and their past experience will evidence forward-thinking project management and organizational skills. The successful candidate must be able to craft critical, curatorial texts to accompany their curation and programming.

Position commences 12 April 2010.

Salary: $35, 000/year + benefits [after three month probation period]

Application deadline:  26 February 2010 [postmarked if mailed]

Cineworks is committed to the principles of Employment Equity and encourages applications from Aboriginal persons, members of a visible minority group or persons with a disability.

Applications containing a cover letter, curriculum vitae, a writing sample and a proposed one-year exhibition plan, must be received by 6:00 p.m. on 26 February 2010.

Please send applications by post or email only to:

Meg Thornton, Executive Director
Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society
#300-1131 Howe Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

We apologize that only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Image: Holly Schmidt's Laboratory for Living