Experimental Express

In a grandiose attempt to take cinema outside of the cinema house, Winnipeg Film Group’s executive director, Cecilia Araneda, along with fellow film-makers Jaimz Asmundson, Walter Forsberg and Solomon Nagler, are launching the third annual WNDX.

The four filmmakers started WNDX in October of 2006, and have since built upon its once modest attendance. This year Araneda said the festival hopes to draw in more than the last two years’ 500 attendees.

Back in 2006, Araneda explained that the four filmmakers had tried to develop a name for the festival which declared it Winnipeg and experimental but avoided the ending “IFF,” indicative of “International Film Festival.” Ultimately they chose WNDX because it came close to standing for Winnipeg International and Experimental cinema and they liked the sound of it.

With an acronym pronounced like the glass cleaner Windex, Araneda states the festival’s goal is “bringing clarity to the art of filmmaking, much like the glass cleaner’s ability to bring forth transparency” as well as “bringing new innovative work to the audience, whom under standard circumstances, wouldn’t have had the opportunity in doing so.”

She also states that WNDX’s success is essentially due to the consistent depth of Winnipeg-born filmmakers.

The city’s natural talents act as the driving force for Winnipeg, which, according to Araneda, is one of the few Canadian metropolises leading the way in avant-garde filmmaking.

Acting as the film fest’s opener on Thursday, Oct. 9 is media artist Alex MacKenzie’s The Wooden Lightbox: The Secret Art of Seeing is a live event demonstrating the breakdown of the foundation of cinema. With part stage presentation, part film, MacKenzie’s project isolates the three components of cinema: motion picture, sound, and editing.

The fest’s most popular attraction, Araneda said, was the “One Take Super 8” event held on the last day of the event, this year Oct. 12. The event consists of screenings of a multitude of short films, produced this past August, with the use of Super 8 cameras. The filmmakers must produce a film without the access to post-production technology, which means that all filmmakers must shoot the film in chronological order, omitting the use of cuts and splices.

For the One Take Super 8 event, Araneda explained that “the wondrous work made by the first-time filmmakers is astonishing, mostly considering the extreme circumstances they are facing.”

Due to the event’s growth in popularity, the gala will be presented at the Garrick theatre, rather than the Cinematheque where it has been held in past years.

Other parts of the festival will focus itself on prairie-based filmmaking specifically from Albert, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with the New Prairie Cinema program.

The focus on prairie filmmaking will not overwhelm the festival though. The fest is also screening selected samplings of Dutch films, through a partnership with the Winnipeg Film Festival and the Dutch Embassy, a new feature this year for WNDX.

On a note of mixed feeling, Araneda said, the fest’s Nova Scotian selection includes a product made by Helen Hill, a native of South Carolina. Just shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Hill was murdered in a home invasion in her New Orleans residence.

But above all, the goal of all of the festival’s programs, according to Araneda, is to promote innovation among Winnipeg’s rising filmmaking community.

“Winnipeg has a really high percentage of achieving of filmmakers per capita. Everyone else in the world, either it be Toronto, Berlin or Tokyo, [has] access to prairie filmmaking before Winnipeg. We hope one day WNDX will achieve the prestige of being the first destination for such work.”

WNDX will be running from Oct. 9 to Oct. 12.. Ticket prices range from free/donation to $10. More information can be found at www.wndx.org.

— With files from Chelse McKee.