Saturday, July 16, 2011

Curator's Notes

The past and the present; the real and the unreal; memory and choices; these are some of the more prevalent themes of Prairie Tales 13. During its curation, the jurors and I also watched a fair number of submissions depicting some rather brutal violence. Why, we're not sure, but on the premise that artists hold the mirror to our nature, I always think these trends are worth reporting. Perhaps it has something to do with our nation's growing hawkishness, or maybe it's a signal typical of a country that's quietly at war. The members of this year's curating jury were Edmonton-based experimental filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre, Emmedia Executive Director Peter Curtis Morgan, Banff Centre Executive Director of Film and Media Kerry Stauffer, and I.

A high school English teacher of mine once suggested that Shakespeare began Romeo and Juliet with a violent brawl because he was a master dramatist who knew a free-for-all was a failsafe way to grab an audience's attention right off the bat. I've never forgotten that, nor have I found another play by Shakespeare that starts with a rumble. Regardless, this year's program kicks off with High School Brawl, which should keep you riveted for its prodigious three-and-a-half minute opening shot, if for no other reason. No less intense in its own way is Xtine Cook's comic horror Suckathumb, in which a child's imagination runs wild in the woods thanks to her mother's bedtime gift of a book of gruesome stories by Heinrich Hoffman.

Next up, the first of three segments from Felt Up!, a web series in which puppets take their cues from audio recordings of real people telling risque anecdotes. Felt Up!'s second and third segments are alternated with two contrasting works: Little Heart, animated by Janna-Marynn Brunnen, traces a cathartic journey from heartbreak to a deeper understanding of love; in Nature's Library, Zoe Slusar invents her own Tree of Knowledge, and the consequence of consuming the fruit implies more room for choice that then familiar Eden myth allows.

Three thematically related experimental works form the middle section of the program. Murray Smith's Maybe Film Dreams is a tongue-in-cheek eulogy for celluloid film, which he suggests is doomed to slumber while the world goes increasingly digital. On the other hand, Aran Wilkinson-Blanc is concerned with exploring new technology as much as he is with examining the uncanny in his trippy The Head. And Kyle Armstrong embraces both celluloid and digital media in i close my eyes and they disappear, his evocation of the liminal world between waking and dreaming.

A fourth leg of the program groups together a trio of quieter, animated works. In Dragon.Love, Haleigh Toney fashions a novel conclusion to an old fairytale when a knight attempts to rescue his lady from a free-spoken dragon. The heroine of What Remains, a stop-motion piece by Stefanie Wong, discovers a strange room filled with manifestations of her past that she must reconcile with her present in order to return to reality. And in Michael Pedruski's A Prairie Love, a woman lies in hospital and recalls the moments of a harsh life in Kalyna country.

The program's final section begins with Christopher Markowsky's The Lifer, a black comedy about a man forced to choose between keeping his dream alive and a promotion at his day job. Trevor Anderson's The High Level Bridge is an engaging memorial to all, including two of his friends, who've jumped from that structure. Can't Trust a Drunk Ninja by Greg Doble is an animated cautionary tale about the dangers of mixing alcohol and the martial arts. And we close with a hilariously messy generational clash on the question of when to have babies, and for whom, in Dominique Keller's The Interrogation.

Enjoy.

Ian Leung, Tour Coordinator
Prairie Tales 13