March 22 2006

Pacific Cinematheque - 1131 Howe St.

Tickets $5.00 (available at the door, or in advance through Cineworks)

Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society is pleased to present NewCineworks 2006, an evening of new short films by Cineworks Members. For the past 25 years Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society has been an integral part of the Vancouver film community. This annual screening is sure to expand visions of cinema as we present works from a variety of genre.

We are also proud to present the Vancouver premiere of edgecode: experimental film initiative, a collaborative venture between Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society and the National Film Board of Canada’s Yukon and Pacific Centre. edgecode is a collection of five short experimental films, the result of an open competition for new experimental work using the classic medium of film. Compelling and provocative, the films are far from the edges of convention and all play with the term “edge code” – whether it’s the individual words, a play on its meaning or a technical reference. The result is cutting-edge experimentation that pushes the boundaries of the moving image. The filmmakers will be in attendance.

Screening Order

(Post) Modern Times
Brian Johnson (6 min, DV, 2005)with live editing and musical accompaniment.
Vancouver Premiere – part of edgecode: experimental film initiative
Riffing on the conventions of silent cinema, (Post) Modern Times examines one of the era’s masterpieces – Chaplin’s Modern Times - in the context of postmodern culture. The film responds to perceived shortcomings of postmodernism by exploring an integrated relationship between music and cinematic structure.

Sayonara Super 8
Pia Massie (6 min, Super 8/DV 2005)
Vancouver Premiere – part of edgecode: experimental film initiative
Sayonara Super 8 uses personal archival footage to ask questions about the fragile nature of memory, human relationships and the foibles of the medium itself.

I Thought of You Often
Yun Lam Li, (5 min, Super 8/DV 2005)
Vancouver Premiere – part of edgecode: experimental film initiative
Translated from a self-reflexive Chinese saying, I thought of you often, this film is a visual poem about the meaning of aging within a culture that is not one's own.

Underfoot
Alex MacKenzie (5 min, 35mm, 2005)
Vancouver Premiere – part of edgecode: experimental film initiative
A rapid-fire dissection of the earth's surface and soil, teeming with life and pulsing abstraction, Underfoot is an experimental study of the insect world using a specially built film exposure device where actual living insects are rendered as photograms on the surface of the film stock.

Mechanical Animal Memory
Amanda Dawn Christie (5 min, 16mm, 2005)
Vancouver Premiere – part of edgecode: experimental film initiative
Exploring the dual use of film as both a mnemonic device and as a documentary archive, images from home movies that have been damaged slide around on the screen, revealing areas of film that are not normally projected (edge code, sprockets, and optical track).

Good Times Vol. 1
Ken Hegan (2005, 35mm, 3min)
A comedy about a romantic marriage proposal that goes horribly wrong.

Comrade Dad
Karin Lee (Super 8mm/16mm/DV. 2005)
Writer/director Karin Lee reflects on her father Wally Lee and the communist bookstore that he ran on Vancouver's Skid Row from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. This experimental biography explores both the person and the effect that his ideological beliefs had on his family, set within the political landscapes of Canada and China at the time of the Cultural Revolution. It is also a little-known story about how a segment of Vancouver's Chinese community embraced Chinese socialism and how their idealism was affected by a changing political climate in China.
Comrade Dad twists memories of a socialist-raised child into the reflection of an adult who is conflicted over the schism between idealism and pragmatism, socialism and capitalism, and personal desires and political activism.

Peaceful Propaganda
A. Jonathan Benny (2005, 35mm 5 mins)
Vancouver Premiere
A present-day Canadian peace march as seen from the admiring perspective of a fascist propaganda newsreel.
Director's statement:
As I watched them march past me with their signs and banners, shouting slogans and waiving flags, I imagined it all in black and white, imposing, aggressive, perverted, during another time and another place. And I heard an authoritarian voice commanding me to join. But I would not.

Laundry
Julia Kwan (7 mins, DV, 2005)
Work In Progress
Through lyrical imagery an educated Chinese-Canadian woman explores her relationship with her working class immigrant Mother, who worked in a laundry factory for 25 years.

One’s Own Snore
Oliver Hockenhull (21 min, DV, 2005)
Vancouver Premiere
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~ Voltaire
One's Own Snore is a speculative drama reminiscent of a lot of things, quoting from a few dozen vaguely remembered yet important films & kinda neo-godardian avant-garde postpunk work on Canadian-US relations and the war in Iraq. With tap dancing, a cute datsun convertible circa 1968, the necessary machine gun, kisses and shuttlecocks.

Break a Leg Rosie
Tara Hungerford, Paul Armstrong (Producer) (11 min, 35mm, 2005)
Break a Leg, Rosie' tells the story of a young woman who is driven by her passion for dance and her "joie de vivre". She is inspired by the sounds and the rhythms of the world around her and this resonates in her every move. She is anxious to get to work because she has been promoted from dishwasher to waitress. After an unfortunate mishap within the first few minutes of her shift, Rosie is demoted back to the dish pit until fate has it that she is given another chance. She is overwhelmed by the job, and instead of serving them food, she delivers them an incredible performance.

(Total Running Time 97 mins)