Punchlines, the latest essay piece from Trevor Anderson, was shot entirely on an iPhone for a self-portrait assignment at the Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab in 2009. Anderson reviews a seminal period of his youth via a montage of excerpts from movies and shows that are deeply ingrained in our pop culture consciousness. Capturing these grainy clips from a television – a medium many of us watch “in bed” – the visual re-interpretation of his own past simultaneously reinterprets the films he rips off, and that’s part of the fun here. Anderson’s other essay films The Island (featured in Prairie Tales 11) and Rock Pockets (Prairie Tales 9) also deal with the “outsider” theme using the same amalgam of whimsy, wit and keen observation. Punchlines’ original score was composed by Doug Organ.Trevor Anderson
Trevor Anderson is a self-taught, independent filmmaker who lives and works in Edmonton. His films have been screened at over a hundred inter national film festivals, broadcast internationally, and are distributed on DVD by Peccadillo Pictures, UK. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Zurich Pink Apple in 2009, Edmonton’s Enbridge Emerging Artist Award in 2008 and the inaugural Lindalee Tracey Award at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto in 2007. Anderson has also been shortlisted three times for the prestigious Iris Prize in Cardiff, UK. He is currently the Programming Coordinator at FAVA and plays in a band called The Wet Secrets.