Film and Video Program

FILM SERIES


LOOKING AT CREATIVITY

This Fall the Gallery continues its program of films that focus on the arts in a new series of recently released feature length documentaries. From Gaudí to Glass, this series offers unique insights into several renowned cultural producers who have each pushed the boundaries in their respective fields of architecture, film, music and the visual arts.

Screenings Tuesdays at 5 pm | Free Admission

27 October - Black White + Gray:
A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe
James Crump, USA/Germany, 2007, 76 minutes. The life and work of the most controversial photographer of our times, Robert Mapplethorpe, and his live-in patron, the collector Sam Wagstaff, are examined in this luminous and probing documentary. Warning: adult content.

3 November - Antonio Gaudí
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Spain/Japan, 1984, 97 minutes. Woman in the Dunes director Teshigahara wordlessly explores the art and buildings of the great Catalan designer Antonio Gaudí as a testament to organic form.

10 November - This So-Called Disaster
Michael Almereyda, USA, 2003, 89 minutes. Actor/playwright – and occasional Nova Scotian resident – Sam Shepard’s autobiographical play The Late Henry Moss is seen through the rehearsal process in this profound look at one man’s vision of the American West. The cast includes Sean Penn, Cheech Marin, Woody Harrelson and Nick Nolte.

17 November - Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
Marina Zenovich, USA, 2008, 100 minutes. A deconstruction of the underage rape case that eventually drove legendary film director Roman Polanski from America, Wanted and Desired explores the convoluted mix of politics and morality that has kept the cineaste a fugitive from the USA ever since.

24 November - GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts
Scott Hicks, Australia, 2007, 115 minutes. Shot in Germany, New York City and – substantially – in Cape Breton, a portrait of Philip in twelve parts sees Shine director Scott Hicks following internationally renowned minimalist composer Philip Glass as he writes his Symphony No. 8 and launches his opera Waiting for the Barbarians. Artist Chuck Close also appears.

15 December - The Rape of Europa
Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham, USA, France, Germany, Russia, Austria/Poland, 2007, 117 minutes. The Nazi’s obsession with art is the focus of this fascinating feature-length documentary that zeroes in on what actually happened to many of the Western World’s masterpieces when war threatened theft and destruction.

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Some notes about the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s
Film and Video Programs

The Dalhousie Art Gallery offers the longest-running fine art and repertory Film and Video Program east of Montreal. Ronald Foley Macdonald has been our Film and Video Curator for the past 15 years. He selects films to complement exhibition programs, and organizes special series on film history and culture. Ron teaches film theory at NSCAD and is an organizer of the Atlantic Film and Video Festival. Through him, we also collaborate with the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-operative, providing a periodic space for local experimental films and rarely seen videos, and with the Annual Atlantic Film and Video Festival, for which we are now an official venue. Our popular Wednesday film/video screening and post-film discussion group extends participation in the critical discourse to new populations of students, faculty and the general public.

Our film program has three purposes:

1. To animate specific exhibitions. For example, Film and Video by Robert Frank accompanied an exhibition of Frank’s photographs (1996); films on the Holocaust accompanied Herzl Kashetsky’s exhibiton A Prayer for the Dead (1998); the series Masters of Modern Sculpture accompanied the exhibition The Very Thing (2000); the series Space Aliens accompanied Bill Eakin’s exhibition of photographs of UFO sightings and alien culture, Have a Nice Day (2001); and, more recently, the series “The sneaky everyday humour of the surreal” was programmed to accompany Lynne Cohen’s exhibition No Man’s Land (2001). Where an artist is a film or videomaker him- or herself, (as in the case of Robert Frank, or, more recently, Herménégilde Chiasson) we often present their cinematic and visual works together. Films are usually screened in the Main Gallery space, so correlations and references are easy to make, especially during the post-film discussion. For many people unused to looking at art, but comfortable with film, this program is an excellent way to prompt thinking about, and provide access to, contemporary art.
    
2. To examine the history and nature of the film medium itself. Examples: Eisenstein and Soviet Cinema (organized in collaboration with the Russian Department in 1995), 100 years of the Cinema (a collaboration with King’s College Contemporary Studies Program, 1996), Female Filmmakers at Five (a collaboration with the Atlantic Film Festval 1997), and Six by Kurosawa (a survey of this prominent Japanese filmmaker’s art, 2001). This program often links up with and supports film studies in various postsecondary institutions across Halifax.
    
3. To make a space for public screenings of Canadian films, and local experiemental film- and video-makers’ works. For example, we have screened works by Canadian film/videomakers Bill MacGillivray, Cameron Bailey, Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak, Herménégilde Chiasson, Cathy Martin, Sylvia Hamilton, Phil Comeau, Claude Jutra, Denis Arcand, and women filmmakers from the now defunct NFB Studio D. More recently, we presented First Nations Films at Five: The complete films of Alanis Obomsawin (in collaboration with the Atlantic Film Festival 2001).
    

We have also aligned our film program more closely with critical discussion in contemporary media arts, by asking our film curator to preface certain Gallery film series with illustrated lectures, and inviting film- and video-makers and critics to present and analyse their works (such as the visits by curator/critics Cameron Bailey and Peggy Gale, videomakers Doug Porter and Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak and filmmakers Sylvia Hamilton, Cathy Martin and Alanis Obomsawin). In addition, where appropriate,we arrange viewer access video programs to accompany exhibitions. These are set up in special viewing stations in the Gallery, where visitors may select videos from the program for themselves.

The Gallery’s Film and Video Program is generously supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

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