Memory in Motion: LIFT x Archive/Counter-Archive

The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and Archive/Counter-Archive are partnering to bring together an in-person screening and panel event to celebrate the 2022 UNESCO World Audiovisual Heritage Week running from October 27 - November 5. The eight films presented as part of Memory in Motion celebrate and reinterpret what is possible through non-fiction storytelling in the way they use archival footage in filmmaking. Although wildly different in approach and style, they explore the generative potential of artistic engagement with documentary heritage in contemporary filmmaking practices as a means of re-imagining our relationship to audiovisual history.

The screening will be followed by a panel moderated by Olivia Wong and featuring filmmakers Franci Duran, Jennifer Dysart and Nadine Valcin.

Memory in Motion

Thursday October 27, 2022

7:00pm - 9:00pm Toronto Metropolitan University

School of Image Arts

122 Bond Street, Room 307

Free - suggested donation of $10

Register for tickets here.

Streaming on CFMDC.tv

All films will feature closed-captioning in English. Although not mandatory as part of Toronto Metropolitan University’s current COVID-10 policy, masks are strongly encouraged for this in-person screening. If you develop any COVID-19 related symptoms or test positive for COVID-19, we ask you to please stay home.

Curated and organized by Cayley James and Helen Lee. Following the in-person screening, the program will be made available to watch on demand on CFMDC.tv until November 5 at 11:59pm ET.

Program:

Running Time: 76 minutes

Origines (2021)

Dir. Nadine Valcin, Archive/Counter-Archive Artist in Residence

Origines, is a two-channel media installation that uses footage from Claude Jutra’s 1963 film “À Tout Prendre (Take it All)” to explore his then lover and film co-star Johanne Harrelle’s complicated quest for identity as a Black Francophone woman in Canada. It was produced as part of a residency at Library and Archives Canada through the research project Archive/Counter Archive.

Arrival Archives (2018)

Dir. Maya Bastian

Two families, similar identities. Fleeing violence, they sought refuge in Canada and began a new life. This is the experience of thousands of people in our great country and yet these stories go mostly untold. Arrival Archives is an artful exploration of newcomer arrival stories, told through a multi-generational viewpoint. The stories intertwine as one, illustrating that Canada’s cultural landscape is a communal experience shared by many different faces. Arrival Archives was produced as part of the Home Made Visible commissioning project in collaboration with Regent Park Film Festival and Charles Street Video

Revisiting Keewatin Biophilia Edit (2022)

Dir. Jennifer Dysart, Archive/Counter-Archive Artist in Residence

The Biophilia Edit evolved out of Jennifer's research project, Revisiting Keewatin. It was created for the most recent Nuit Blanche on October 1 and presented as a large-scale projection installation on the window surfaces of Archives of Ontario at York University. The Biophilia Edit focuses on the interconnected role of animals in the lives of the Cree and Dene people in the 1950s in Northern and Central Canada. Showing the joy and beauty of traditional northern life, this edit stands in stark contrast to the rest of the archival source film Keewatin Missions which documented the Catholic church's interest in Indigenous children. Revisiting Keewatin was produced as part of a residency at Library and Archives Canada through the research project Archive/Counter Archive.

It Matters What (2019)

Dir. Francisca Duran

Absences and translations motivate this experimental animation of It Matters What in an exploration of the methods and materials of reproduction and inscription. The inquiry is set within a framework of practical and critical human relationships with other-than-human-species elucidated by the theorist Donna Haraway. A fragment from Haraway's essay "Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene" is reworked here as a poetic manifesto. Enigmatic found-footage calls into question human violence over animal species. Plant life is both the subject matter of the images and assists the means of photographic reproduction. The techniques used include in-camera animation, contact prints and phytograms created by the exposure of 16mm film overlaid with plant material and dried for hours in direct sunlight.

Wild Currents (2015)

Dir. Stephen Broomer

A tragic mistake jolts Teddy and Joanne into limbo. Their spirits bear witness to their past usage of household appliances, as if by electric charge they might uncoil their spectral presences from home and garden.

Soy un ser cuyas raíces / I am a being whose roots (2018)

Dir. Zoë Heyn-Jones

Soy un ser cuyas raíces // I am a being whose roots reworks Jacques Madvo’s “Countries and People: Venezuela” to explore labour and migration. Taking the final words of the film’s voiceover as a starting point, this film pairs Madvo’s film footage with a text-based conversation with young Venezuelan literature scholar and language teacher Angel Said Dominguez Pinto. Dominguez Pinto relocated to Panama in 2014 to make a living teaching English, Spanish and German in Panama City after Venezuela’s economic collapse. Over e-mail, Zoë and Angel co-authored a conversational text, exploring migration, labour, exile, and hemispheric relationships. This film was created as part of LIFT’s Madvo commissioning project from 2017/2018.

The Walnut Tree (2000)

Dir. Elida Schogt

Through a striking combination of documentary and experimental approaches, The Walnut Tree examines Holocaust memory, the family, and the role of photography in history. As its point of departure, the film shows three girls in Dutch costumes posing for their father's camera. This sweet but fleeting moment, made static in a snapshot, is contrasted with live-action images of railway tracks—tracks that carried the death transports—now blurred by the passage of time. Fragments of an interrupted childhood emerge in the matter-of-fact narration by the filmmaker's mother, recounting the fate of the family's photo album, her parents' walnut tree, and her final memories of her mother and father in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

Confessions of a Compulsive Archivist (2004)

Dir. Mary J. Daniel

Built from artifacts recovered from her own then her mother's storage closet, Confessions of a Compulsive Archivist follows the filmmaker's tragic-comic struggle to let go of a few things of obviously no use to her. Part found footage film, part camera-less video, it turns stuff that should have been thrown out long ago into a poignant study of the relationship between the creative imagination and our attachments, be they material or emotional.

Questions about this program can be directed to LIFT Development Coordinator Cayley James at development@lift.on.ca

Archive/Counter-Archive (A/CA): Activating Canada's Moving Image Heritage is a seven-year research-creation project focusing on works by Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), Black communities and People of Colour, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities. Led by Janine Marchessault and funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant, the partnership is composed of four universities (York, Toronto Metropolitan, Queen's, and Concordia), numerous communities, memory institutions, and policy advocates. Our research is committed to finding solutions for safekeeping Canada's audiovisual heritage. We seek to activate and remediate audiovisual heritage that is most vulnerable to disappearance and inaccessibility, fostering a community and network dedicated to creating best practices and cultural policies.

CFMDC.tv is a public online space for screenings, discussions, and other CFMDC-affiliated programming. It's an online space where CFMDC can connect with its members and extended communities to watch media work together and foster critical dialogue.

The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) is Canada's foremost artist-run production and education organization dedicated to celebrating excellence in the moving image. LIFT exists to provide support and encouragement for independent filmmakers and artists through affordable access to production, post-production and exhibition equipment; professional and creative development; workshops and courses; commissioning and exhibitions; artist residencies; and a variety of other services. LIFT is supported by its membership, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Arts Foundation, the Government of Ontario and the Toronto Arts Council.

Image: Soy Un Ser Cuyas Raíces (2018), Zoë Heyn-Jones

For questions or accessibility requests, please contact Lodoe Laura, lodoe@cfmdc.org.