Prairie Tales 12

Presenting Prairie Tales 13

2011-07-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Prairie Tales 13 premiered on June 24th at the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society's (AMAAS) annual conference, which this year took place from June 23-26 in Hinton, Alberta. Conference delegates and members of the Hinton community gathered at the Firebay Studio at The Guild on 821 Switzer Drive for the 7:30 pm screening. The show was followed by a Q&A session with four directors whose work is featured on the program. The directors were Janna-Marynn Brunnen (Little Heart), Dominique Keller (The Interrogation), Christopher Markowsky (The Lifer) and Stefanie Wong (What Remains).

Prairie Tales’ thirteenth annual program of live-action, animated and experimental works has a running time of 80 minutes and features the fourteen works listed below. Prairie Tales 13 is also available in an abridged, 32 minute version aimed at young audiences aged twelve and up. Works on the Prairie Tales 13 for Young Audiences program are marked with an asterisk (*).

High School Brawl
Lethbridge 2010, 4:46, HD Video, Live Action. Dir: Aaron Kurmey

High school punks get more than they bargained for when they gang up on a lone man in a stairwell.

Suckathumb
Calgary 2010, 9:15, HD Video, Live Action Comedy-Horror. Dir: Xstine Cook

A child’s imagination runs wild in the woods, fueled by a book of horrific bedtime tales.

Felt Up!
Edmonton 2010, 1:35, 2:51, 2:52, SD Video, Comedy. Dir: Simon Glassman

Puppets re-enact true stories told by real people.

Little Heart*
Calgary 2010, 6:43, Animation. Dir: Janna-Marynn Brunnen

A young woman journeys to a new understanding of love after her first heartbreak.

Nature’s Library*
Black Diamond, 2010, 3:10, HD Video, Live Action Drama. Dir: Zoe Slusar

A young girl discovers a mysterious tree while walking in the forest. 

Maybe Film Dreams
Calgary 2010, 3:19, Super 8, Experimental. Dir: Murray Smith

A whimsical, experimental eulogy for celluloid film.

The Head
Calgary 2010, 5:00, HD Video, Experimental. Dir: Aran Wilkinson-Blanc

A young woman experiences an altered state that reveals the fluid natures of identity and perception.

i close my eyes and they disappear*
Edmonton 2010, 6:00, Super8, 16mm, HDSLR, Experimental. Dir: Kyle Armstrong

An experimental depiction of the border zone between waking and dreaming.

Dragon.Love*
Calgary 2010, 2:34, Animation. Dir: Haleigh Toney

A humourous new take on the story of the knight in shining armour who rescues a damsel in distress.

What Remains*
Calgary 2010, 4:20, Stop Motion Animation. Dir: Stefanie Wong

Fiona discovers a strange room filled with objects from her past and must link them with the present before returning to the real world.

A Prairie Love
Edmonton 2011, 3:14, Animation. Dir: Michael Pedruski

An elderly, hospitalized woman recalls her past in rural Alberta’s Kalyna country.

The Lifer
Calgary 2009, 8:00, HD Video, Live Action Comedy. Dir: Christopher Markowsky

A postal worker must choose between a promotion and his dream of becoming the world’s best marine biologist ever.

The High Level Bridge
Edmonton 2010, 4:39, HD Video, Documentary Essay. Dir: Trevor Anderson

The filmmaker drops his camera from Edmonton’s High Level Bridge in memory of those who have jumped from it.

Just Can’t Trust a Drunk Ninja*
 Calgary 2011, 2:00, Animation. Dir: Greg Doble 

A cautionary tale about the dangers of mixing alcohol and the martial arts.

The Interrogation*
Calgary 2011, 7:00, HD Video, Live Action Comedy. Dir: Dominique Keller

A late evening drive home from the office takes an unexpected turn when Gloria is pulled over by the cops.

Home

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Welcome to the web-home of Prairie Tales, the annual touring anthology of short films and videos made by Albertan media artists. Every year, we bring out a new batch of works from the shining lights of our province's media arts scene and assemble them into a feature-length package for distribution across Alberta and beyond.

You'll find information about our latest anthology, Prairie Tales 12, under The Works, where each short is listed in order of appearance on the program. Click on a title to see a description of the short and a bio of the artist(s) responsible for it.

Information, Artists and Bookings

About Prairie Tales and FAQ, our Frequently Asked Questions page, contain more in depth information about our program. You'll find those under the link list to the right.

FAQ is also where to go if you’re a media artist interested in having your work become part of a future Prairie Tales anthology, or someone from a cinema, gallery, school, library, community hall, film club, media arts organization (or anywhere else!) who’d like information about how to schedule a screening of Prairie Tales, or about how to arrange a Prairie Tales artist visit to your community in conjunction with a screening.

Thanks for checking us out. We look forward to hearing from you!

Ian Leung

Tour Coordinator
Prairie Tales

Call for Submissions

2010-11-23T09:46:00.001-08:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Thirteenth Annual Prairie Tales Media Arts Tour

Metro Cinema Society in association with AMAAS (Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society) invites filmmakers, videographers, documentarians, and animators to submit their recently completed works to Prairie Tales, an annual touring program of short works by Albertan media artists.

In its thirteenth consecutive year, the Prairie Tales Tour celebrates the diversity of work created by media artists in our province. In circulation over several months, Prairie Tales screens throughout Alberta and across Canada at media art centres, galleries, and schools.

A work is eligible for submission to Prairie Tales if:

it was completed during the 18-month period prior to the deadline*
it has a running time of 15 minutes or less
its creator’s primary residence is in Alberta

With your submission, please include a completed submission form, a brief description of your work (including date of completion and original production format) as well as an artist's biography. Preview copies may be submitted on VHS or DVD only. Works must be submitted in final edited form. Prairie Tales 13 will be curated by the Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator and a peer jury. Artists whose work is included in the program will be paid the CARFAC rate for multiple film/video screenings. There is no submission fee.

Please note that while the Prairie Tales staff does its best to briefly test all submissions to make sure they play, the responsibility for ensuring that a submitted work plays properly from start to finish on a standard DVD or VHS player rests with the applicant. Submissions with playback problems during curation cannot be guaranteed consideration by the jury.

*The deadline for submissions is 5:00pm on January 31, 2011. Download submission form.

Please send your submission to:

Prairie Tales Jury
Metro Cinema Society
Room 632, Stanley Milner Library
7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton AB T5J 2V5

If you have any questions regarding submissions or the Prairie Tales Tour, please contact the Metro Cinema office at prairietales@metrocinema.org or 780-425-9212.

Programmer's Notes

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Our deteriorating environment, the crash of ‘08 and conflict around the world were recurrent themes in this year’s crop of Prairie Tales submissions. If that apocalyptic subject matter doesn’t sound very cheery, rest assured that our province’s media artists have found engaging, entertaining and, more often than not, amusing ways to treat this material. Of course it’s not all politics and monsters in this year’s program, but even those works that focus on the eternal theme of the human condition often bear the translucent watermark of our uncertain times.

Witness Caitlind r.c. Brown’s s p a c e, the experimental piece with which Prairie Tales 12 lifts off: it’s a metaphorical love story that asks flat out, “Where are we going?” Wherever it is we’d better hope it’s not to the world of James Cadden’s Escape from Death Planet, unless we’re watching the carnage from the safety of a rescue shuttle.

The creative team that is DROOLART takes us into deep space in another sense entirely with a wild ride through four capacious imaginations in the animated Tales from the Heart. Then it’s a messy splashdown to earth in a very current sense with Tar Sand Pudding, Xstine Cook’s rambunctious, kid-powered eco-satire, followed by Andrea N. Mann’s A Dozen Ways, a charming all-egg-ory about transformation inspired by the economic downturn. T.J. Lynch’s touching Water Under the Bridge similarly traces a path to personal metamorphosis, in his case through memories from a painful past.

Halfway through the program, we now pay a quick and invigorating visit to Greg Doble’s Coffee Stop, after which Trevor Anderson sets the pace anew with his latest essay piece Punchlines. Sheryle Carlson’s short, sharp, shock of a mini-doc Glimpses of Injustice: The Annual Olive Harvest in Palestine returns us to current affairs in the West Bank, and we polish off the leg with a heady, meta-film celebration of, well - film - in Kyle Whitehead’s Maverick.

Finally nearing the end of our odyssey, we pay one last visit to outer space, dangerous planets and monsters with The El Huge-O Maximus, yet another installment in Carol Beecher and Kevin D.A. Kurytnik’s ongoing Intergalactic Who’s Who series. Then we hop in the car with comedy troupe Sciencebear for their cleverly executed Greenwash Gang and grab one for the road at The Empress, Lyle Pisio’s wistful stop motion romance, before ending - square in the zeitgeist of a year in which apocalypse movies flooded the box office - with Jay Mosher’s amusing, animated Would you believe it’s the end of the world, Kenneth?

And there you have it. Another year in the life of Albertans refracted through the diverse approaches and visions of some of the best our media artists have to offer. It was a pleasure to sit and watch these and many other submissions with my fellow jurors: artist David Hoffos; Melody Jacobson, former Executive Director of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers, currently ED of the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association, and former Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator Leslea Kroll.

Contact Us

2010-08-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

Staff
Prairie Tales' staff consists of a part-time Tour Coordinator supported by the Metro Cinema's administrative personnel. The Tour Coordinator may be contacted as follows:

Ian Leung
Tour Coordinator

prairietales@metrocinema.org

Mailing address:
c/o Metro Cinema
632 Stanley Milner Library
7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 2V5

Phone: 780.425.9212
Fax:780.428.3509

Thanks to our Funders

2010-08-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

About AMAAS

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The Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS) is a not-for-profit society dedicated to fostering the common objectives of Alberta’s diverse media arts organizations and artists in the areas of promotion and education. Recognizing the media arts’ vital role in the cultural fabric of the province of Alberta, AMAAS provides a forum for dialogue between the media centres, creating synergies and enhancing the abilities of the centres and their memberships to create and exhibit artistic works. For more information, please visit amaas.ca.

FAQ

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Prairie Tales' Frequently Asked Questions

Immediately below are answers to some common, general questions about Prairie Tales. If you're an exhibitor with specific questions, click here to see Frequently Asked Questions from Exhibitors. If you're a media artist who would like to submit a work for consideration for Prairie Tales, click here to see some Frequently Asked Questions from Media Artists. If you're a distributor or exhibitor interested in the work of a particular Prairie Tales artist, please contact the Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator.

Frequently Asked Questions (General)

1. What exactly is Prairie Tales?

The straight and simple answer to this question is that Prairie Tales is a feature-length movie comprised of short films and videos made by artists based in Alberta. A new edition of Prairie Tales comes out each year, put together by a jury that curates the program out of dozens of new shorts submitted by Albertan film and video makers during the winter months. Prairie Tales programs usually run from seventy to ninety minutes in length and contain about fifteen short works.

Prairie Tales is also a program - the initiative sense of the word - that promotes Prairie Tales anthologies for screening at libraries, schools, colleges, universities, community halls, galleries, media arts centres and cinemas across the province of Alberta and beyond.

In addition to securing bookings of the shorts feature, the Prairie Tales program also pays for artists who've made the works in the anthology to visit organizations that have booked an exhibition in order to give workshops or talks or simply to introduce the program and answer questions from the audience afterward. These visits are funded by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts' Travelling Exhibition Program, which pays for the circulation of many different kinds of art and artists through communities across the province each year.

2. Are all the shorts in Prairie Tales about the prairies?

No. To find out more about what kinds of films and videos you'll see in a Prairie Tales program, go to the next question.

3. What kinds of films and videos will I see in a Prairie Tales program?

You'll always see many different kinds of films and videos.

In any given year, a Prairie Tales program will probably feature animated shorts of all sorts - including conventional, hand-made, computer generated and/or stop motion. There are also usually live-action drama and comedy films and videos, as well as more challenging, experimental works. Prairie Tales collections have also included documentaries, essay films, music videos and dance on video and film and even video jams.

Shorts featured in Prairie Tales programs may be made using a wide variety of media, including 16mm, 35mm or Super 8 film, standard and high definition video, digital video, iphones - and combinations of any of the above.

4. How long has Prairie Tales been around?

Prairie Tales has been around for twelve years, which is why the most recent (2010) anthology is known as Prairie Tales 12. Each edition of Prairie Tales is numbered that way. Prairie Tales 11 came out in 2009, Prairie Tales 10 in 2008, all the way back to the first Prairie Tales, which came out in 1999.

5. Who's responsible for Prairie Tales?

Prairie Tales is produced jointly by Metro Cinema Society in Edmonton and the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS), which is currently based in Calgary. Metro Cinema provides administrative support to the program, which receives funding from AMAAS and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) through its Travelling Exhibition Program.

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Frequently Asked Questions from Media Artists

1. Do works submitted to Prairie Tales have to be about the Prairies?

Absolutely not. The name “Prairie Tales” loosely refers to where our media artists are based (the prairie province of Alberta). It does not at all dictate what the stories must be about. Works can be of any genre and on any theme and may take place in any locale in any language (although if your work is not in English and you want your dialogue to be understood, please include subtitles). And no, there is no special consideration favouring films that do reference or highlight the prairies or Alberta.

2. When can I submit my film or video?

The call for submissions usually goes out in late November or early December of each year. The deadline to submit is usually in late January. Please do not submit works before the call is announced.

3. Can I submit more than one work?

Yes. However, it should be understood by all artists submitting work that in the interest of including a multiplicity of Alberta voices in the anthology, it would be an extraordinary circumstance for the jury to include more than one work by the same media artist in any one Prairie Tales program.

4. If I've been in Prairie Tales once, can I be in it again in subsequent years?

Yes.

5. Can I submit a work that is almost finished?

No. Regrettably, it’s impossible for us to fairly judge complete works against incomplete works. Accepting incomplete works into the program also leaves both Prairie Tales and the artist in question wide open to too many production liabilities. If your film requires very minor corrections, such as adjustments to the credits or cleaning up a sound flaw here or there, that’s fine. If it’s missing a soundtrack, still has scenes to come, or is in the form of a rough edit, please wait until next year to submit it.

6. What makes my work eligible or ineligible for Prairie Tales?

There are three basic eligibility requirements:

Your work must have been made within the eighteen months period leading up to the submission deadline (usually the last Friday in January).
Alberta must have been your (usually the creator-director’s) primary residence when the work was made and completed. If you feel you or your work qualifies as Albertan on other grounds, please make those clear in your application. The decision of the Tour Coordinator as to its eligibility in such a case is final.
The start to finish (credits included) running time of your work must be 15 minutes or less.

And that’s it, other than a few commonsense requirements that are meant to ensure your work can be fairly adjudicated. These include things like submitting by the deadline, submitting in the proper media (VHS or DVD), and ensuring your submission plays clearly from start to finish on a current standard DVD or video player (i.e. not just for the first 30 seconds and not just on your computer).

We do our best to accommodate human error but unfortunately we cannot guarantee works that are part of incomplete applications or that do not play clearly or in their entirety on our equipment on the day of adjudication will be considered by the jury for inclusion in the program. All this and other information will be outlined on the submission form when it is made available.

7. If my work does not make it into Prairie Tales, can I submit it again next year?

Yes, as long as it still eligible (i.e. if it’s still eighteen months old or less by then).

8. Why did my work not make it into Prairie Tales?

Contrary to popular perception, Prairie Tales does not bill itself as a “best of Alberta” collection. While the primary criterion for inclusion in the exhibiting collection is quality, Prairie Tales typically receives more submissions of calibre than can be accommodated in a cohesive 70-90 minute program of short works. So if your work is in, be assured that’s because it was considered by the jurors to be among the best submissions that year. But if it isn’t, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was not also highly regarded by one of more of the jurors.

9. If my work does not make it into Prairie Tales, can I find out why?

Sort of. Prairie Tales can provide artists with very limited, constructive feedback in the form of a summary of notes the jurors took during the curation process that are directly related to your work. Please understand that these opinions are subjective and in no way represent a definitive opinion as to the quality of your work. The Tour Coordinator can provide you with this information upon request.

10. What’s so great about getting my work into Prairie Tales?

We will ask you to join the collection by signing a contract that permits the work to part of the Prairie tales collection for that year for a distribution period of eighteen months in exchange for a fee payable to you. In the past this distribution fee has been $600. Prairie Tales will then work to see that the collection gets played as far and wide as possible during its distribution period.

11. Where does Prairie Tales screen?

Prairie Tales is primarily screened in Alberta at independent cinemas, media arts co-ops, galleries, libraries and community centres. Increasingly it has been screened elsewhere in Canada, including in Whitehorse, Winnipeg, Guelph, Fredericton and Swift Current.

12. How many screenings of Prairie Tales are there each year?

Generally there have been anywhere from twelve to twenty screenings per year. But the number of exhibitions has generally been growing.

13. Does being in Prairie Tales prevent me from distributing work on my own?

Not at all. We encourage Prairie Tales artist to promote and screen their works independently as much as possible.

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Frequently Asked Questions from Exhibitors

1. Does it cost anything to show Prairie Tales?

The fee to screen Prairie Tales is $150. This fee, on par with the most economic rental rate generally available for feature films, helps to cover postage, artist fees and fees for workshops that might be held in connection with the screening. It also covers multiple screenings within a period of a few days.

Still too rich for your blood? Talk to us! Or if you're in Alberta, why not program your screening during Arts Days when, thanks to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Prairie Tales is available to exhibitors free of charge?

2. How can I arrange a showing of Prairie Tales?

Simply contact the Tour Coordinator at prairietales@metrocinema.org and let us know:

the date(s) and time(s) you'd like to screen it
the location (room, venue, address) you'd like to screen it
any other contact information you'd like us to post on our website
whether you lack any equipment that would make it possible for you to show the program

We'll send you a DVD or beta copy for the exhibition, along with programs, posters and a promotional kit to help advertise the event. If you have equipment needs, we'll do our best to help you overcome them. After your screening, we'll ask you to help us keep track statistics by sending you a short questionnaire.

And that's pretty much all that's involved.

3. What equipment do I need to show Prairie Tales?

Prairie Tales has been screened in movie theatres, at art galleries and in community centres, on walls outdoors and in, on projection screens and television monitors in front of audiences large and small. Even if all you have is a television and a DVD player, you have all you really need for an exhibition of Prairie Tales. If you don't have any equipment, let us know and we can help you with that, too!

4. Once I've shown Prairie Tales, can I screen it again?

The Prairie Tales exhibition fee of $150 covers multiple screenings within a period of a few days. However, if you'd like to screen it again outside of that initial period, the fee applies all over again. Please note that Prairie Tales programs can only legally be screened during their distribution period, which terminates for each at the end of August the year after it's released. For instance, Prairie Tales 12 is in circulation from June 25, 20010 until August 31, 2011.

5. Is Prairie Tales suitable for all audiences?

Prairie Tales 12 is rated 14A for "coarse language and infrequent gore in a comic context." Please click here for more information from the Alberta Ratings Board.

Prairie Tales 11 is rated 14A for "coarse language." Please click here for more information from the Alberta Ratings Board.

If you have any specific concerns about the suitability of Prairie Tales for your audience, please contact the Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator, who will be glad to discuss this question with you.

6. Can I watch Prairie Tales before deciding whether to screen it?

Of course. Just ask us for a preview disk. We'll send it to you right away and you can let us know afterward whether you'd like to go ahead and schedule a screening or not, no hard feelings either way.

7. How do I arrange for an artist visit in association with my screening?

Just tell us what you'd like the artist to do and we'll do our best to match you up with one who fits your needs and is available when your screening is taking place.

Depending on their skills and backgrounds, Prairie Tales visiting artists can teach workshops or give talks on a variety of subjects related to the media arts, including animation (in all of its forms), editing, storytelling with film or video, making Super 8 movies, promoting yourself as a filmmaker, and getting your work seen, just to name a few. Some artists like to give talks about their work and their process, bringing along some more short films they've made to show your audience. Artists can also simply attend your screening in order to introduce the program and stay to answer questions from the audience afterward.

Some exhibitors will request a particular artist based on an interest in their work in the anthology, so another suggestion is to browse the website notes and artists bios for each work in the latest progarm and see if anything piques your interest.

If you're still not quite sure what you want, don't hesitate to talk things over with the Tour Coordinator, but if or once you do, let the Coordinator know:

what you'd like the artist to do
the date and time you'd like them to do it
where you'd like them to do it
for how long you'd like to have them (workshops can last as long as three hours, talks are generally not more than thirty minutes to an hour in length)
how many people you'd like to serve (particularly in the case of a workshop)

The Tour Coordinator will then contact artists that are suited to fulfill your request and arrange a visit from one of them.

8. How much does an artist visit cost me?

Artist visits cost nothing to you, the exhibitor, unless you request a workshop or class that requires material(s) or equipment that's prohibitively expensive for us to provide. In that case we ask you to either share those particular costs with us, or if they're very high, cover them entirely. But workshops don't have to involve costly materials.

To be very clear, Prairie Tales covers the cost of an artist's travel, accommodation and meals during their visit, and pays them the fee for their services too. You, the exhibitor, don't pay for any of that.

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Colophon

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Prairie Tales is produced by Metro Cinema, in association with AMAAS (the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society), and with the financial support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Jury: David Hoffos, Melody Jacobson, Leslea Kroll, Ian Leung
Film Descriptions: Ian Leung
Art Direction: Marie Hohner
Mastering: Studio Post
Opening Animation & Duplication: Studio Post
Printing: DeJong Printing

About Metro Cinema

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Metro Cinema is a community-based non-profit society devoted to the exhibition and promotion of local, Canadian, international and independent film and video in Edmonton, Alberta. To this end, Metro exhibits an eclectic blend of film, video and media arts that would not otherwise screen in the city. Metro’s focus is on presenting a broad selection of innovative, cultural and educational works. The Society operates with the assistance of a large volunteer base, and produces a regular program, bringing in artists and facilitating discussion. For more information, please visit metrocinema.org.

About Prairie Tales

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Each year, for twelve years now, Prairie Tales has offered a selection of some of the best recent short films and videos made by Albertan media artists in the form of a feature-length movie. This anthology showcasing work from the shining lights of the Alberta media arts scene is distributed and screened across Alberta and beyond until the end of August the following year.

The most current edition, Prairie Tales 12, will be in circulation until August 31, 2011. Prairie Tales 11 will be withdrawn from distribution after August 31, 2010.

Prairie Tales is produced by Metro Cinema in partnership with amaas and with funding assistance from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

You can find out more about Prairie Tales by clicking here to visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.

For even more information or to schedule a Prairie Tales screening in your community, please contact the Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator at:

Metro Cinema
Room 632, #7 Churchill Square
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 2V5
T: 780.425.9212
F: 780.428.3509
E: prairietales@metrocinema.org

Screenings - Prairie Tales 12

2010-08-08T08:09:00.002-07:00

Prairie Tales 12 is in distribution until August 31, 2011. It received its premiere at the Sled Island Film Festival, screening at the Plaza Theatre in Calgary at 7:00 pm on June 25, 2010.

Red Deer, AB

Wednesday, March 23rd, Time TBA

Red Deer College
Motion Picture Arts Classes

Visiting Artist:
Trevor Anderson (Punchlines)
Red Deer College alumnus will visit motion picture art classes in the afternoon to show and talk about his work. In the evening he will be present for a Q&A at a screening of Prairie Tales 12 hosted by the college.

Lethbridge, AB
Thursday, March 24th, @7:00pm

AMAAS Fundraiser
Tongue n Groove
518 5th Street South
Contact: 403.942.6676
Admission: TBA

Guest Artist: TBA

St. Albert, AB
Friday, April 7th, 7:30 pm

St. Albert Articulture Festival
2011 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards
Arden Theatre
5 St. Anne Street
Contact: 780.459.1542
Admission: Free

Guest Artist: Trevor Anderson (Punchlines)

Swift Current, SK

Thursday, May 26th, Time TBA

Lyric Theatre
227 Central Avenue North
Contact: 306.773.6292

Visiting Artist: TBA

High School Screenings

John G. Diefenbaker High School, Calgary
Communications Technology Classes
Guest Artist: TBA

Leduc Composite High School, Leduc
Film and Media Classes (Dec 9, 2010)
Guest Artist: Trevor Anderson (Punchlines)

Austin O'Brien High School, Edmonton
Film Classes (Dec. 7, 2010)
Guest Artist (Dec. 8, 2010): James Cadden (Escape from Death Planet)

Past Screenings

Grande Prairie
Wednesday, January 19, 11:30 am - 14:45 pm

Grande Prairie Regional College
Location: Rm L123
Admission: Free
Contacts: Emily Bingeman 780-539-2215 or Joanne Porta 780-539-2443

Guest Artist: Andrea N. Mann (A Dozen Ways)
Andrea N. Mann will attend the screening on the 19th and take questions from the audience afterward. On Thursday afternoon, she will attend Tina Martel's video class to talk about her work and answer questions from the students.

Fort McMurray
Saturday, December 11, 7:30 pm

Keyano College
Visual and Performing Arts Centre
Room C111

Visiting Artist:
Carol Beecher (Intergalactic Who's Who: The El Huge-O Maximus)
Carol will be visiting a Fine Arts media class at Keyano College to show and talk about her work and offer feedback on the work of the students on Monday, December 6, 7:00-10:00 pm

Wetaskiwin
Wednesday, November 24, 7:00 pm

Wetaskiwin Public Library
5002 - 51 Avenue
780.361.4446

Visiting Artists:
Trevor Anderson (Punchlines)
Trevor will be present at the screening on November 24th
Caitlind r.c. Brown (s p a c e)
Caitlind will be giving a workshop on Cameraless Animation at the library from 12-4pm on November 27th

Alberta Arts Days Screenings:

During Alberta Arts Days, the latest Prairie Tales anthology is made available to programmers free of charge. Prairie Tales was a proud participant Arts Days 2010, which was celebrated from September 17-19. Exhibitions of Prairie Tales 12 took place in the following communities:

Banff
Saturday, Sept. 18, 7:30 pm
Max Bell Building
Banff Centre for the Arts

Visiting Artists:
Price Morgan and Afshin Vahabzadeh
(Tales from the Heart)

Calgary
Sunday, Sept. 19, all day
Emmedia Open House
Emmedia Gallery & Production Society
#203, 351 - 11th Avenue SW

Visiting Artist(s):
Xstine Cook
(Tar Sand Pudding)
Greg Doble
(Coffee Stop)

Coaldale
Friday, Sept. 17, 2:00 pm
Saturday, Sept. 18, 2:00 pm
Coaldale Public Library
2014 18 Street

Visiting Artist:
Andrea N. Mann
(A Dozen Ways)

Didsbury
Saturday, Sept. 18, 7:00 pm
Didsbury Municipal Library
2033 19th Avenue

Visiting Artist:
Lyle Pisio
(The Empress)

Edmonton
Friday, Sept. 17, 7:00 pm
Saturday Sept. 18, 7:00 pm
Metro Cinema @ Rice Theatre (in the Citadel)
9828 101A Avenue

Visiting Artist:
Friday:
James Cadden
(Escape from Death Planet)
Scott Townend
(Greenwash Gang)

Saturday, Sept. 18, 2:30-5:30 PM
Film & Video Arts Society - Alberta (FAVA)
FAVA Open House
9722 102nd Street

Visiting Artist:
James Cadden
(Escape from Death Planet)

Forestburg
Friday, Sept. 17, 7:30 pm
Forestburg Public Library
4901 50th Street

Grande Prairie
Friday, Sept. 17, 10:00 am, 3:00 pm
Saturday, Sept. 18, 10:00 am
Sunday, Sept. 19, 1:00 pm
Rotary Community Room
Grande Prairie Public Library
101, 9839 103 Avenue

Visiting Artist:
Eric Becker on Sunday
(Water Under the Bridge)
Eric will speak about the making of Water Under the Bridge and about film making and producing.

High Prairie
Friday, Sept. 17, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Reading Room
High Prairie Municipal Library
53rd Avenue @ 48th Street

Lethbridge
Saturday, Sept. 18, 8:30 pm
Sunday, Sept. 19, 2:30 pm & 6:30 pm
Prairie Tales Tent, Galt Gardens (downtown)

Visiting Artists:
Andrea N. Mann
(A Dozen Ways)
Caitlind. r.c. Brown
(s p a c e)

Okotoks
Saturday, Sept. 18, 1:00 pm
Okotoks Public Library
7 Riverside Drive West

Visiting Workshop Artist:
Lyle Pisio
(The Empress)

Penhold
Thursday, Sept. 16, 7:00 pm
Penhold and District Library
Penhold Regional Multiplex
Range Road 280 @ Hwy 42

Visiting Artist Q&A:
Kyle Whitehead
(Maverick)

Red Deer
Thursday, Sept. 16
Screening for Hunting Hill High School
English and Media classes
and for Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School
English classes

Friday, Sept. 17
Visiting Workshop Artists at Hunting Hill High School English and Media classes:

Caitlind r.c. Brown (s p a c e): workshop on filmmaking and the visual components of analyzing and understanding film
Price Morgan (Tales from the Heart): workshop on digital animation (overview)
Lyle Pisio (The Empress): stop motion animation and the making of The Empress

Friday, Sept. 17
Visiting Workshop Artists at Lindsay Thurber Comp High School English Classes
Price Morgan (Tales from the Heart): workshop on digital animation (overview) and the filmmakers process and sources of inspiration
Lyle Pisio (The Empress): stop motion animation and the making of The Empress

Rocky Mountain House
Friday, Sept. 17, 7:00 pm
Meeting Room
Rocky Mountain House Public Library
4922 52nd Street

Sundre
Friday, Sept. 17, 3:00 pm
Sundre Municipal Library
#2 - 310 Centre Street North

Taber
Friday, Sept. 17, 8:00 pm
Taber Legion Hall
5205 48th Avenue

If you are programming events for Arts Days and would like to know more about how to arrange a free screening of Prairie Tales 12 during the celebration in September, please contact the Prairie Tales Tour Coordinator, Ian Leung, at prairietales@metrocinema.org.

Stay tuned to this page for more information on these and further screenings of Prairie Tales 12.

Screenings - Prairie Tales 11

2010-08-08T08:09:00.001-07:00

Upcoming Screenings

Prairie Tales 11's distribution period ends August 31, 2010.

Past Screenings

July 16 & 17
Times: TBA

South Country Fair
Fort McLeod, AB
@10:00 pm nightly

June 10 - 12
Times: TBA

Arts Without Borders Festival
Film Festival at Lloydminster Public Library
Lloydminster, AB
Thursday: 10:15 am & noon
Friday: 4:00 pm & 5:45 pm

May 29, 2010
Time: 8:00 pm
Lyric Theatre
227 Central Avenue North
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
306.773.6292
Admission: $5 membership fee applies

Visiting Artist: Kimberley Anderson (The Fall)

May 2, 2010
Time: 7:00 pm

Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque
100 Arthur Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Admission: Free

March 19, 2010
3:00 pm
Room W731
Centre for the Arts
4401 University Drive
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge, AB
Hosts: Trap Door Artist Run Centre & the University of Lethbridge Art Society
Admission: Free, and all are welcome to attend
Contact: info@trapdoorarc.com or artsociety@uleth.ca

Q&A Guest: Corey Lee (In Translation)

January 31, 2010
7:00 pm

Calgary Premiere!
Hosted by CSIF, emmedia, Quickdraw Animation
Plaza Theatre
1133 Kensignton Rd. NW
Calgary, Alberta
403.283.3636
Admission: General $10, Students & Organizational Members $8

Q&A Guests: Kimberley Anderson (The Fall), Ben Charlton (Transient Bodies), Corey Lee (In Translation), aAron munson (Leaving Me)

January 20, 2010

11:30 am - 12:50 pm

Grand Prairie Regional College Fine Arts Department
Rm D208
Grand Prairie Regional College
Grand Prairie, Alberta
Free to all GPRC students and the community
Contact: Fine Arts Office 780.539.2443

Visiting Artists: Paul F. Becker & Cameron Dahl (Video Game Players Union)

January 8,2010

Time: 9:00 pm

Firehall Films Series
Yukon Film Society
The Old Fire Hall
1st Avenue & Main Street
Whitehorse, YT
Contact: Yukon Film Society 867.393.3456

November 10, 2009

Time: 10:00 am

Motion Picture Arts Department
Red Deer College
Red Deer, Alberta
Admission: 3rd & 4th year Motion Picture Arts students

Visiting Artist: Trevor Anderson (The Island)

October 26, 2009
Time: 8:00 pm

Visual and Performing Arts Department
Keyano College
Fort McMurray, AB
Admission: Media in Art Students

Visiting Artist: Eva Colmers (Luz)

September 26, 2009

Time: 3:45 pm

Kaleido Arts Festival
Avenue Theatre
9030 11th Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta

School Screenings:

John G. Diefenbaker High School
Communications Technology Class
Calgary, Alberta

Alberta Arts Days Screenings

September 18-20

Banff Public Library
101 Bear Street, Banff, Alberta 403-762-2661
Friday September 18
2:00 pm and 4:00 pm

Sunday, September 20
4:00 pm
Edmonton's Metro Cinema
Zeidler Hall (inside the Citadel Theatre)
9828 101A Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta 780.425-9212
Sunday, September 20
12:00 noon
Forestburg Public Library

4901 - 50th Street, Forestburg, Alberta 780-582-4110

Friday September 18
7:30 pm

Jasper Municipal Library

500 Robson Street, Jasper, Alberta 780-853-3652

Friday September 18
11:00 am

Saturday September 19
11:00 am

NUTV (University of Calgary Campus Network)
Channel 17: University Residences (with sound) & MacEwan Student Centre (no sound)Friday, September 18
9:00 pm

Saturday, September 19
9:00 pm

Sunday, September 20
9:00 pm

June 26, 2009

8:00 pm

amaas Conference
Edmonton Alberta
Metro Cinema

Would you believe it's the end of the world, Kenneth?

2010-08-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 0:50, Dir: Jason Mosher

How will the world end? On a dark and stormy night, a blustery wind ruffles the rooftop shingles, the satellite dish banks and swirls like a wayward spinnaker and a white picket fence writhes and curls as if it were the spine of some living skeleton. Meanwhile, all’s warm and snug inside and everything presumably feels fine. Jason Mosher’s contention that we might never know what hit us – maybe because we’re held rapt by visions of our demise disguised in the form of entertainment – is ironic, droll and fetchingly executed in a cutout, pop-up approach to stop motion animation that makes the apocalypse seem as quaint a blip as our existence in spacetime. A collaborative creation made as part of Quickdraw Animation Society’s Animation Lockdown, Would you believe it’s the end of the world, Kenneth? was designed, built and shot over the course of three days.

Jason Mosher

Jason Mosher is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Calgary. His art explores the inherent potential of materials, objects and space that can be manifested using sculpture, video, drawing and photography and that deal with the conceptual and extraordinary. He received his B.F.A. from the University of Lethbridge in 2005 and, the same year, was the Alberta winner of the BMO Financial Group’s First Art Competition. His work has been seen as part of group exhibitions that include stART: emerging artists from across Canada at Studio 21 in Halifax (2006), Paper Fitting at the Trianon Gallery in Lethbridge (2008) and the Gushul Studio and Collaboration Project Residency in 2008. Growing up on the prairies, Mosher appreciates the significance of feeling insignificant.

The Empress

2010-08-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 8:25, Dir: Lyle Pisio

Lyle Pisio returns for the second year in a row with another exquisitely animated stop motion piece, The Empress, inspired by and created for the song Empress by Montreal’s Briga. This time, themes of addiction and the failure of courage, which preoccupied Pisio in last year’s metaphysical Visages, join loneliness, desire, love, miscommunication and loss in a wistful and altogether gentler vein, tinged with comic injections. Basking his duo of hesitant, whittled-out, mannequin lovers in warm, yellow light and pitting their tentative interaction against a sideshow that features an angry, inattentive bartender pestered by two nattering barflies, Pisio’s depiction of the fragile first moments of falling in love is haunting and bittersweet.

Lyle Pisio

Lyle Pisio started out in the early 1980’s as an alto sax player and founding member of no less than five Calgary based bands. He has always thought of the mostly free-improvisational music he plays as narrative in quality. In mid 2000 he bought his first digital camera and started making very short stop motion animation films with objects found on the highway on long bicycle trips. By early 2007 he had quit his job as an instrument repair technician to pursue his dream of being an artist. Approaching his craft using a variety of techniques, Pisio has made a number of his films with computer programs that he wrote himself. His works have been screened at world festivals and broadcast on Canal+ in France. Pisio’s other films are Corpse (2002), TV and The Unholy (2004), Another Lost Soul (2006) and Visages (2008), which was featured in Prairie Tales 11 and won best animation at the WT International Film Festival in Os, Norway. He now lives with his wife and 2 cats in Calgary, where he has been all his life (mostly in the basement).

Greenwash Gang

2010-08-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2008, 5:00, Dir: Ian Day

Greenwash Gang is about a trio of money launderers who, determined to eliminate the middleman, take a step up in the crime world and attempt their own bank robbery. To tell you any more would spoil the fun. This short from the comedy ensemble Sciencebear is tightly paced, smartly conceived and delivers the laughs. Shot, edited and finished on HD in just seventeen hours for the Edmonton International Film Festival’s 24/1 twenty-four hour filmmaking contest, it picked up the Best Director award for troupe member Ian Day. Staged in two shots, each using exactly the same frame, Greenwash Gang creates as much action off screen as on with the help of sound effects, dialogue and its performers’ reactions. For fans of degrees-of-separation games, the closing credits roll over the intro to Secret March by Trevor Anderson’s band The Wet Secrets.

Sciencebear

Sciencebear Productions is a filmmaking group committed to producing videos that make people laugh and, perhaps, induce milk to come out of their noses (provided they’re drinking milk while they’re watching). When Greenwash Gang won a Best Director award at the Edmonton International Films Festival’s 24/1 contest, Ian Day, Tyler Fraser and Scott Townend realized making funny videos was a thing they should do more often. Since founding Sciencebear, they have collaborated with comedians from the Loose Moose on a new short All in and begun working on a feature film, Sketch, scheduled for completion in the spring of 2010. More work from Sciencebear can be seen on their Funny or Die account at www.funnyordie.com/sciencebear.

Intergalactic Who's Who: The El Huge-O Maximus

2010-08-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2010, 1:30, Dir: Kevin D.A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher

Canadians of a certain age fondly (or not) remember the informative Hinterland Who’s Who TV commercials that are the inspiration for the ongoing outer space parody that is Kevin D.A. Kurytnik and Carol Beecher’s consistently entertaining and well-made Intergalactic Who’s Who series. A fixture of Prairie Tales programs for the past four years, the IGWW focuses on the flora and fauna of another planet, distant and harsh, known as Zig 5 - a world that’s populated by fantastical creatures who are generally either very, very fierce or very, very frightened. It’s always tempting to see Kurytnik and Beecher’s creations as allegorical in some way and The El Huge-O Maximus is no different, but as usual the piece is just as much fun taken straight up without interpretation.

Kevin D.A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher

Kevin D.A. Kurytnik has been creating eccentric worlds in his head since he was a youngster trying to alleviate boredom while driving a combine on the family farm. When he entered the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD), the inhabitants of those worlds spilled out onto paper and then, in a steadfast migration that has so far lasted twenty years, spread to animated film and video. Unsure if she was going to become a theatre technician or an animator, Carol Beecher figured either way she’d have to be an artist. So she too went to ACAD, where she and Kurytnik met, and since then Beecher’s been wrangling most of his creatures with her pencil. In 2004 they released Mr. Reaper’s Really Bad Morning, an epic, animated short film they made together. Currently the brain and the pencil are exploding with creatures from the planet Zig 5 for their Intergalactic Who’s Who series. Beecher and Kurytnik also teach Animation in the Visual Communications and Design department at ACAD. Their animation studio is called Fifteen Pound Pink Productions because that’s how much their cat weighed.

Maverick

2010-08-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 6:46, Dir: Kyle Whitehead

Kyle Whitehead calls Maverick “a meta-film…part lucid dream, part manifesto and part autobiography.” He shot the piece on Super 8 and developed it himself by hand, experimenting with alternative chemical processes to achieve its look. Whitehead felt he benefited doubly thanks to this D.I.Y. approach, first by being able to remain in constant contact with his celluloid source material and second, by being continually reminded over the course of his improvisations of the roles that indeterminacy and the unexpected play in the creative process. Fusing quite seamlessly with its original score by Josh Seeley, Maverick is an unabashed celebration of the world’s eye-view made possible on film via the lens of a motion picture camera.

Kyle Whitehead

Kyle Whitehead, a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with Super 8 film, the photographic process and low-tech electronics, holds a B.F.A. from the Alberta College of Art and Design. He confesses he prefers the careful and considered approach to image making, but warns that this should not be confused with a strict adherence to what some might call best practices. Calling himself a “mad, sensorial alchemist”, Whitehead leaves plenty of room for serendipity in his work. If the lo-fi and D.I.Y. technologies he favours bring indetermin acy to his creative process, he finds his faith in chance confirmed by the unusual and startling effects he achieves with them. Whitehead’s other films, Vidoplyasov’s Laments, Nothing and Four Vignettes, are also made using Super 8. He currently resides in Calgary, where he is also the assistant director of the Stride Gallery.

Glimpses of Injustice: The Annual Olive Harvest in Palestine

2010-08-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Onoway, 2009, 7:57, Dir; Sheryle Carlson

The second overtly activist piece in this year’s program focuses on a little known but elsewhere documented (in Haaretz for one) aspect of Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestine’s West Bank. Except for text part way through and at the end of the video, Carlson takes a direct cinema approach to this mini-doc, allowing the olive farmers to tell their side of the story as they try to access their groves in the occupied zone. What gives this eight-minute piece a feeling of completeness is the fragmentary capture of an incident that adds weight to her subjects’ words. As her title suggests, we get a mere impression of this event – never seeing the arrest of the man in the green shirt and only hearing what will probably happen to him – but within the considerable limitations imposed on her, Carlson has assembled a well-rounded piece that provokes as effectively as it informs.

Sheryle Carlson

Art is activism for Onoway-based film maker Sheryle Carlson. Her work engages with issues surrounding social justice, corporate and governmental responsibility and environmental sustainability. An important point of focus for Carlson is the communication of facts, ideas and ideals often obscured or hidden by the onslaught of mass culture and conformist pressures of consumerism that limit diversity and in some cases, free thinking .

Punchlines

2010-08-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

Edmonton, 2009, 5:00, Dir: Trevor Anderson

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.

Coffee Stop

2010-08-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 1:00, Dir: Greg Doble

With seven simple shots and adroit and apropos interventions by way of animation and sound effects, Greg Doble successfully renders both visible and sensible a certain legal, ritual altering of states craved and enjoyed by millions the world over. Short and sweet, Coffee Stop is a sip of a film that takes us from zero to re-integration in a revitalizing sixty seconds. Doble’s choice of white for his animated overlay is deceptively interesting, opening this piece up to interpretation on more than one level.

Greg Doble

Greg Doble, a new media artist based in Calgary, is currently a fourth year student at the Alberta College of Art and Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies Program. Favouring illustration, animation and photography in his work, he likes to focus on the mundane as well as on interesting interactions between people, and he often elaborates on everyday experiences in fantastic ways. Doble describes his work as influenced by both design and fine art practices and characterizes his style as light-hearted with a carefree sentimentality.

Water under the Bridge

2010-08-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 13:15, Dir: T.J. Lynch

Execution on all fronts matches the high production values of Water Under the Bridge, a drama about a man coming to terms with his past. Among many other things, the performances that writer-director T.J. Lynch draws from his cast stand out in particular. In a short film, there’s not much time for an audience to forgive a false note and just one mistake can undermine a whole piece. The heart of Lynch’s film is a taut and tersely scripted flashback that calls on his actors to hit some intense emotional marks (Dustin Bollinger and David LeReaney merit kudos for their work as the young protagonist and his anguished father, respectively). Lynch justly credits the evident talents of all his performers, but even with such a fine cast a less judicious director might easily have misfired.

T.J. Lynch and Co.

Water Under the Bridge is a collaboration between director T.J. Lynch, producer Phay Wills and co-producers Deb Green and Eric Becker. Wills (Phayzer Productions Inc.) focuses on character driven, multi-platform comedy and drama projects designed for the international marketplace, Green (Pentalpha Productions Inc.) is a writer, casting director and n ascent producer and Becker (Becker Productions) is a Calgary-based independent producer. Lynch was awarded a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for his screenplay The Beginning of Wisdom. A Plumm Summer, which he penned during that Fellowship, was made into a film in 2007. He later wrote and directed Water Under the Bridge as a stepping-stone toward someday directing his Nicholl award-winning script.

A Dozen Ways

2010-08-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

Calgary, 2009, 5:06, Dir: Andrea N. Mann

A Dozen Ways is another piece that takes a creative and amusing tack to address current affairs. It’s also an example of a short that charmingly and engagingly fuses narrative voice-over with well composed images. Applying a light touch to its heavy subject - the economic downturn – A Dozen Ways tosses the egg around as a metaphor and playfully keeps it in the air from start to finish, all the while riffing on familiar egg aphorisms. Writer-director Andrea D. Mann’s quirky angle of approach is in the spirit of the creative ethos that Mirai, the video’s heroine, discovers is the silver lining in her unexpected misfortune. Mann calls A Dozen Ways “a simple, humourous contemplation of ways to live that enthusiastically embrace the present moment – which only exists as temporary peace and order between the inevitable major and minor crashes that disrupt even our best-laid plans.”

Andrea N. Mann

Andrea N. Mann is a visual artist working in film, video and animation. Her background in painting, printmaking, installation, photography and writing provided the foundation for a very organic evolution toward her current and, she feels, lasting fascination with time-based media. Mann has an insatiable appetite for knowledge and a particular interest in psychology and cultural anthropology, but she leaves room for herself to explore other topics of observation, contemplation and reverie in her art as well. Her other media works include Lessons of the Fur Factory (2009), Sons and Fathers, Atlantis Project, Work Day (2007), Living it Through (2006), and Ten Cent Tip (2004). For Mann, the practice of her art is not just a creative and intellectual pursuit, but an ongoing rebellion against what she considers two powerful conditions of our time: alienation and apathy.

Tar Sand Pudding

2010-08-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

Calgary 2010, 4:56, Dir: Xstine Cook

By letting children staff the kitchen of a satiric cooking show that demonstrates how to make Tar Sand Pudding, Xstine Cook makes her social criticism as infectiously enjoyable as it is unequivocal. In other hands this might have come off as just a record of a performance artwork, but Cook transcends mere documentation, achieving a real sense of immediacy as she captures the ingenuous energy and enthusiasm of children at play. Keep an eye out for the almost surreal presence of the pink bunny. Whatever your position on the Alberta oil/tar/job sands development, this piece of activist mayhem will likely make you chuckle in spite of yourself. After all, there’s no denying the pudding the grown-ups are making is bad for the ducks.

Xstine Cook

Calgary-based artist Xstine Cook works in a very wide range of creative métiers, including mask making and puppetry, which she has studied in Bali, Italy, France, California, and Canada. She is the Artistic Director and Founder of the Calgary Animated Objects Society, and the Curator of Calgary’s International Festival of Animated Objects, a biennial, ten-day festival of mask and puppetry. Also an experimental theatre artist, Cook recently began making short puppet films. Her trilogy Face and Mooks at Home was shown at the National Gallery as part of Alberta Scene, and Dead Boyfriends has received screenings at film festivals internationally. Tar Sand Pudding, Cook’s fourth film, is the first with her daughters Maezy, Medina and Zaiyah, aged 7, 5 and 3 respectively. She’s currently in post-production for Suckathumb, a live-action, animated puppet film based on the gothic children’s poetry of Heinrich Hoffman.

Tales from the Heart

2010-08-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

Banff 2009, 2:57, Dir: Tyler Jordan, Saki Murotani, Price Morgan & Afshin Vahabzadeh

Tales from the Heart is a collaboration between four artists, Tyler Jordan, Price Morgan, Saki Murotani and Afshin Vahabzadeh, collectively known as DROOLART. After agreeing their guiding theme for this piece would be the human heart and restricting themselves to a black, white and red colour scheme, Jordan, Morgan, Murotani and Vahabzadeh went off separately to create their own content. Employing a wide range of animation techniques and styles ranging from hand drawing to applying complex particle systems they each came up with surreal, often beautiful imagery. A week later the quartet reunited to mash it all up into a polished, psychedelic mix of sound and “chaotic eye candy” as they call it. In their words, Tales from the Heart is “a wild ride through the body, the gutter and the cosmos”.

DROOLART

DROOLART is Tyler Jordan, Price Morgan, Saki Murotani and Afshin Vahabzadeh. The four designers and animators met in 2007 at the Banff Centre’s Film and Media Department and were united by a common love of art and design in motion. DROOLART’s interests range from interactive web design to animation and compositing to high end 3D rendering. Jordan, Morgan, Murotani and Vahabzadeh maintain a team-centred approach when creating together, deriving concepts through group discussion and giving each member a voice in determining the direction of a project.

Escape from Death Planet

2010-08-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

Edmonton 2009, 7:00 - Dir: James Cadden

This work’s sharp-looking opening sequence doesn’t disappoint, segueing to a fast moving, delightfully mid-fi space adventure complete with alien life forms and a trio of carping, under-gunned anti-heroes. Escape from Death Planet will put viewers in mind of summer matinees: remember exiting those darkened cinemas into the afternoon sun, giddy and ready to play shoot ‘em up with imaginary monsters that spilled out of storefronts and alleyways all the way home? Writer-director James Cadden quite briskly rides the line between parody and playing it straight, offering yuks and tension along with some genuinely well-integrated CGI effects served up with more than a touch of something that looks an awful lot like tomato sauce. Mamma mia!

James Cadden

James Cadden graduated from the University of Alberta in 2009 with a B.A. in film studies and a minor in art and design. He has been an enthusiastic filmmaker since high school, learning and developing his technique with each short he has made. This direct experience has fostered an interest in all aspects of film production, including special effects, make-up and costume design, and developed him into a versatile jack-of-all-trades. Cadden hopes to expand on his base in the Edmonton area, where his self-funded short films have played at festivals, and to one day enter the film industry on a professional level. He enjoys photography and swimming in his spare time.

s p a c e

2010-07-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

Calgary 2010, 4:00, Dir: Caitlind r.c. Brown

This experimental short is, in the words of writer-director Caitlind r.c. Brown, “a frustrated love story about astronauts and rocket ships, spaces between people, and the human desire for closeness.” While simple and spare in its style, s p a c e’s evocative imagery and sound score by Wayne Garrett coalesce to permit Brown’s multiple levels of meaning play. Black and white Super 8 and high definition video were combined to achieve the look of the piece. John Frosst and Elaine Shandro play the astronaut couple “stretching out the window and into outer space, where they face the conflict between love and adventure, home and beyond, happiness and the quest of the unreachable. Where are we going? And how will we know when we get there?” The closing image of a nebula suggests that an uncertain answer to these questions can be a beautiful thing.

Caitlind r.c. Brown

Caitlind r.c. Brown is a new media artist, filmmaker, social photographer and radio DJ living in and broadcasting from Calgary, Alberta. She admits she’s obsessed with celluloid, experimental cinema, doomed love stories and old junk. A recent graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, she now lives in the Arbour Lake School house and volunteers for as many film-related organizations as she can. It’s her intention to be an astronaut someday.