Introduced by Lauren Howes
Lauren Howes is the executive director of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC).

Spanning four decades of Canadian experimental cinema, tonight's program comprises work that is visually and viscerally engaged with the natural world. Made by artists from or living in Canada, these films and videos employ an array of aesthetic strategies and image technologies to depict nature while simultaneously exploring the nature of the cinematic image. They include photograms of natural objects as well as a reprise of the first filmed images ever shot in Canada, and range from quiet and slow contemplations to multilayered and optically printed frenzies. While some investigate Canadian landscapes with intensity and proximity, others explore the animal or the animated with ironic distance. With passion, intensity, and humor, f ilm artists David Rimmer, Ellie Epp, Richard Kerr, John Price, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Daichi Saito, and Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby offer us provocative visions of this land they call home.-Irina Leimbacher

Light Magic (Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, 2001, 3 mins, Color, 16mm). Migration (David Rimmer, 1969, 11 mins, B&W, 16mm). Notes in Origin (Ellie Epp, 1987, 15 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm). En Plein Air (Richard Kerr, 1991, 20 mins, Color, 16mm). View of the Falls from the Canadian Side (John Price, 2006, 7 mins, Silent, Color/B&W, ‘Scope, 35mm). Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (Daichi Saito, 2009, 10 mins, Color, 35mm). Beauty Plus Pity (Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby, 2009, 14 mins, Color, Digital video)

Guest curator Irina Leimbacher, an independent film curator, teaches film studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire. She was invited by the CFMDC to survey their catalog of approximately 3,000 films to create programs for Canadian and international presentation as part of its newly launched international curatorial residency program, Avant-Garde Canada: Curating The CFMDC Collection. CFMDC would like to acknowledge the full support of the Canada Council for the Arts for funding this project initiative.