(Francesca Svampa, Spain, 6 min)

A dreamlike portrait of Barcelona, shot in double exposure on reversible 8mm film, is interwoven with an intimate “I remember” voice, creating a collage of memories à la Brainard and Pérec.

The director’s personal micro-memories, as a woman, filmmaker and immigrant, evoke the spirit of a time that may never return, constructing a communal heritage. The act of making this film, involving the haphazard double exposure and the fragility of the physical film itself, becomes a metaphor for the perpetual tension between memory and oblivion.

(Brandon Walley, US, 12 min)

A meditation on interdependence and impermanence within the ecology of the Detroit River area, the remnants of industrialization and the environmental exploitation of capitalism.

(Cecilia Araneda, Canada, 5 min)

Shot at Bate Island in Ottawa, landing is made from hand-processed B&W 16 mm film hand-coloured with organic and photochemical tones, video and found sound. landing examines moments of respite in between flight and movement.

landing is without language.

(Yuula Benivolski, Canada, 6 min)

My mother always wanted a garden, and now she has one. A poem about family genealogy that highlights the relationship between a name and a place.

Tatars and other non-Russian communities in the USSR were forced to go through Russification: the spread of Russian language, culture, and people into non-Russian cultures and regions. Forcing the many minority groups within Russia to accept Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determination and separatism. As a result, my mother, a Tatar woman born in Moscow, never properly learned her mother tongue or practiced Tatar traditions outside her family home.

Composed of Super 8 home movies.

(Christine Panushka, US, 5 min)

Working with elements created in Kate Lain’s online cyanotype workshop, Interlude was created during the 2020-2021 pandemic.

(Devin Allen, US, 7 min)

Occupying gaps in memory and history, Blue Distance serves as a personal and poetic intervention into the filmmaker’s familial immigration story. The film places in communion the mythic powers of cinema and the production of personal and cultural histories. Underpinning these tensions is the immigratory reality of occupying stolen land while trying to secure one’s own actualization.

(vicky smith, 10 min)

The film is a reflection on exposure, of skin to sun and of film to light, and the environmental, ecological, social and hereditary factors that impact the aging process. Textures of the skin filmed in extreme close up appear in single or short frame bursts, and, accompanied by percussive sounds, create a fast paced rhythmic journey around the surface of the body. This film is then seen at a later stage, as a filmstrip manually reexamined on a light box, alongside spoken analysis of the exposure times. Then, old photos of my mother, and her mother, on the beach, are seen in close-up. The DIY analogue film processing method gives this material a burnt brown look, while the inclusion of ‘mistakes,’ such as fogged and scratched sections, emphasize the sense of exposure and damage to skin and to film material.

(Anna Kipervaser, US, 3 min)

I know, you’re a seasonal beast
Like the starfish that drift in with the tide
With the tide
So until your blood runs
To meet the next full moon
Your madness fits in nicely with my own
With my own
Your lunacy fits neatly with my own
My very own

– from Sea Song by Robert Wyatt

(Karel Doing, United Kingdom, 3 min)

A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film’s emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve. The film consists of sequences that are intricately composed and parts that are completely ‘self-organized.’ As such, plants appear not merely as inanimate objects but rather as characters who are expressive in their own right. Such otherworldliness is also reflected in a sequence of gargoyles, providing a link to the hidden animist tendencies that prevail in human culture. This primordial expressiveness is underlined by an improvised guitar solo by the inimitable Florian Magnus Maier.

(Luis Macias, Spain, 10 min)

“The ocean is the only crossing to arrive at Mount Analogue. Through each wave, which breaks into each of the primary colors, a gateway opens to a new perception… That of an ocean as deep, dark, and as difficult to access as the climb to the highest mountain. To the top, where the sixth sun can be perceived.”

First piece of the short film series for the Sixth Sun project. Inspired by the pre-hispanic myth of the Sixth Sun. This chapter is inspired by the René Daumal book Mount Analogue.

The Engauge Experimental Film Festival, now in its 5th year, celebrates the art of analog experimental filmmaking. Only films that originate on celluloid film are eligible for the festival. In 2022, Engauge features 73 films from 15 countries, showcasing a wide variety of experimental techniques.

Most films will be presented as digital transfers, but the majority of film programs will also include 16mm and 35mm film prints. The festival closes with a solo show and expanded cinema performance by Kristin Reeves that will deploy nine 16mm projectors simultaneously in the NWFF lobby!

⚠️ Please note: NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. We are not currently checking vaccination cards.