Screening: aCinema presents Archispectrals *IN PERSON*

aCinema presents Archispectrals featuring film and video works by Shir Handelsman, Garush Melkonyan, Jillian McDonald, Boris Labbé, Rachael Jones, and Anne MacMillan. 

Recitative [Shir Handelsman]
An opera singer stands on a lifted platform, singing a Martyr's wish for redemption. A counterpoint between the human voice and mechanical sounds of machinery moving up and down. The music, taken from one of J.S Bach's cantatas, is the Recitative Movement which describes the ascension of Christ and expresses the desire to become one with god.

Ubi Sunt [Garush Melkonyan]
In a more or less near future, two women try to preserve what seems to be left of the world: nature, luxuriant but fragile, their relationship, necessary but precarious. The threats that weigh on this environment explode into inner conflict; gestures and words become the only recourse - the last resort to regain the harmony of the world.

The Dark Season [Jillian McDonald]
Filmed in Svalbard during the polar night. A dark presence looms as Elsa, clowns, and ecotourists roam. Coloured shapes, inflatables, and swimmers linger at the end of the world, and the landscape imagery bends, breaks and glitches.

Any Road [Boris Labbé]
"- so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
(Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

Tracing Granite [Rachael Jones]
Tracing Granite (2018) follows a field trip that took place in October 2017. Led by sculptor and cultural geographer, Dr David Paton, Tracing Granite: In Search of a White Cross took its participants on a tour of the six granite districts in Cornwall and Devon. Over four days, filmmaker Rachael Jones joined a group of artists, geologists, archaeologists and writers and recorded their discussions, research and discoveries. The experience of the quarries and multiple insights are interpreted using mixed methods and formats, from Super8 to digital collage.

Daydreaming Devices [Anne MacMillan]
Simple paper tools that flatten being in the world. That lower dimensions through a language of apertures. A sequence that cuts though layers of cloud, of entoptic phenomena, and passes though the pursed lips as a perfunctory tune. The ghost of microsaccades leaves a momentary mark on the minds eye, on the drifting atmosphere. This work was supported by a Canada Council for the Arts research grant.  It was completed during a residency with the School of Visual Art in NYC. In the video Day Dreaming Devices, the view cuts between three modes. Hands. The sky. Eyes closed. I was thinking about losing the natural ability to daydream, of relying on assists. Of devices to burn the after-image of a kind of visual language into the mind’s eye, to stir the clouds, as a way to bring continuity where it doesn’t belong, to force an empty meaningfulness into oneself and out into the world.

Full program details are available on aCinema’s website.

ATTENDING IN PERSON? PLEASE NOTE OUR COVID POLICIES. 

Registration is required for in-person event attendance at Woodland Pattern, as is a nominal ticket donation to hold seats. Gallery attendance is limited to 20 audience members. Each attendee must register individually.