Worried Earth Film Screening
October 21, 2022 at 6:30 pm
Cinematheque Theatre, 100 Arthur Street
Presented in partnership with the Â鶹´«Ã½ Film Group
Join us for a free film program presented in conjunction with the Gallery 1C03 exhibition Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief. The program includes a screening of the feature film “The Magnitude of All Things” (2020), directed by Jennifer Abbott, as well as short experimental films by artists Kelsey Braun, Julie René de Cotret, Maureen Gruben, Colleen MacIsaac and Diane Obomsawin. The program will be introduced by Worried Earth research assistant and exhibiting artist Natalie Goulet and assistant curator Melanie Zurba.
Â鶹´«Ã½ the Films
The Magnitude of All Things (2020), Directed by Jennifer Abbott (85 min)
When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. Abbott’s new documentary “The Magnitude of All Things” draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief—both personal and planetary. Stories from the frontlines of climate change merge with recollections from the filmmaker’s childhood on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. What do these stories have in common? The answer, surprisingly, is everything.
For the people featured, climate change is not happening in the distant future: it is kicking down the front door. Battles waged, lamentations of loss, and raw testimony coalesce into an extraordinary tapestry, woven together with raw emotion and staggering beauty that transform darkness into light, grief into action.
Last Breaths on the Great Expanse (2009), Kelsey Braun (1 min, 10 sec)
This video uses heat to distort an image of a prairie landscape encroached upon by an expanding urban centre. Rhythms created by “breathing” radiators and the subtle clangs and moans of creaking swings and chains on poles in a frozen schoolyard sync with the waves of heat. The orchestra of field recordings in combination with the abstracted landscapes of this work reflect the uncertainty and change of a land caught between use and abuse.
Untitled (2014), Julie René de Cotret (45 sec)
This short untitled film documents a performance in which the artist, Julie René de Cotret, uses her body and a bicycle to drag a flaming tree across an empty intersection in a small town in rural Ontario. Living and practicing on the parcel of land she inhabits, René de Cotret's work often consists of absurd, disruptive gestures that challenge our idealized conception of bucolic living and agricultural landscapes. She highlights the environmental and sensorial turbulence that humans enact upon their natural surroundings in quick, highly theatrical performances.
Stitching My Landscape (2017), Maureen Gruben (6 min)
Stitching My Landscape’s core visual elements — red material stretched across ice — are embedded in a recollection artist Maureen Gruben has of her brother harvesting a seal: while processing the animal, he pulled a long, vivid, red string of fresh gut out taught against the white snow. Consisting of 111 ice holes connected with red broadcloth, “Stitching My Landscape” extends for nearly a thousand feet. It was installed April 23rd, 2017, on an expanse of the frozen ocean surrounding Ibyuq Pingo, outside Gruben’s home in the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk. In this film, which is simultaneously documentation and artwork, aerial views reveal the sheer scale of the installation. They also reveal stunning marks in the snow: footprints, and sled and skidoo tracks. These are the usually invisible traces left by the artist’s process, by everyone who was involved in supporting the process, and by those who visited the piece after it was created. The background audio is the sound of a traditional chisel that had belonged to Gruben’s father, working the ice; it has been slowed down such that each moment of contact becomes reminiscent of a heartbeat.
Warming (2007), Colleen MacIsaac (4 min, 24 sec)
Warming attempts to address the issue of climate change in a lyrical and visually contemplative manner. Focusing on the interconnected nature of the ecosystems and societies in which we live, it explores the causes and effects of global warming across the planet through an ever-shifting montage of painted watercolour images.
Walk-in-the-Forest (2009), Diane Obomsawin (3 min)
Diane Obomsawin's whimsical animated short follows medicine man Walk-in-the-forest on a walk in the woods that leads to the discovery of an intriguing secret world.
Acknowledgments
Gallery 1C03 is on Treaty 1 Territory. We are located on the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.
This film screening event is supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, and is part of an interdisciplinary research project on eco-anxiety and climate change-related grief. This research project is led by Co-Principal Investigators Melanie Zurba (Dalhousie University) and Erica Mendritzki (NSCAD University) with collaborators Andrew Park (University of Â鶹´«Ã½), Roberta Woodgate (University of Manitoba), David Busolo (University of New Brunswick), and Lisa Binkley (Dalhousie University). The work is also supported by Research Associate Polina Baum-Talmor, and research assistants and graduate students: Lily Barraclough, Sara Boyd, Morgan Brimacombe, Luke Fair, Natalie Goulet, and Bryanne Lamoureux.
GETTING HERE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Cinematheque Theatre is located in the heart of Â鶹´«Ã½'s historic Exchange District in the Artspace building. It is across the street from Old Market Square at the corner of Arthur Street and Bannatyne - one block west of Main Street. The Artspace Building is wheelchair accessible by elevator, from the west side entrance at King Street and Bannatyne Avenue. Once inside, the theatre is accessible by ramp and there is room for wheelchair seating on aisle ends. There are gendered washrooms on the first floor of the Artspace building.