Screening at the RPL Theatre in Regina Saskatchewan
Hosted by the Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative
Tuesday March 25, 2014
 |
| Gerald Saul and Jason Britski |
Since the late 1990s, Jason Britski has been bringing his
unique viewpoints, his technical agility, and keen aesthetic style to the art
of experimental and documentary film. This selection of eight of his short
films samples from his early work but emphasizes the complexity of his newest
endeavors, some of which have never been publicly exhibited in Regina. These
films are not simple to interpret, being abstract, ambiguous, or both. They are also beautiful, hypnotic, and deeply
personal. As you watch them, you may imagine yourself in the back seat of a
car, your mind wandering to real or imagined childhood moments or simply
mesmerized by the textures, light, reflections, and patterns of the scenery
just beyond the window. You might imagine yourself walking down sidewalks,
along coastal shores, or around tourist sites, your feet firmly on the ground
but your mind constantly adrift. The point of view in Britski’s films is often that
of a passenger, a tourist, or a wander; discovering details but not in control
of the journey.
These films are also voyages through time, questioning the
value of the past, of old buildings, of monuments, and inevitably of history
itself. For Britski, the line between his interests in history and filmmaking
is inseparable. Through the use of old home movies, archival photographs,
monuments, and ancient places, and mirrors, he uses his filmmaking to question
what is valuable in our society. An undercurrent of nostalgia lies within each
of these films but his connection to the past is just as often appalling as
fond.
Another curious motif within Britski’s films is how he
“draws” lines on or across the frame using telephone wires, sidewalk cracks,
the sea shore, or the horizon. He discusses this interest as an attraction to
the form, texture, and colour but I would propose that each of the lines
suggests greater metaphors. While a telephone wire creates a seam in our visual
space, separating one part of the sky from another, it is also a piece of a
network, a conduit to connect us to one another. A coast line separates water
from land but is also a meeting point, a junction which defines the people who
live at its edge. Sidewalks connect one place to another. Line on maps divides
properties but unite those within the boundaries. The borders of the frame, the edge of a mirror,
pickets of a fence, the bars of a cage, or the prairie horizon similarly divide
and unite. It is left to the viewer to decide if these images create division
or connection.
Few filmmakers make me second guess my interpretations of
their work as much as Jason Britski. For any “rule” I might propose about how
or why he makes his films, I can find numerous counterarguments. His work is
unified by his distinctive style but contradictory and elusive in his goals and
outcomes. It could be that my attempt to find answers is the problem and that to
establish an entry point into viewing Britski’s films, one must let go of the
need to know the answers but instead to embrace the work as a series of
questions. It is as if Britski is searching for something that is always out of
reach, trying to decide between an endless stream of binary choices. As
viewers, Instead of trying to determine “What does Britski mean by that?”, you
might instead ask yourself “What does that mean to me?”.
Manipulating the images, Britski
creates a portrait of night from daytime images shot on numerous media formats.
The soundtrack is a collage of music by composer Jason Moberg along with
diegetic (or sometimes faux-diegetic) sound including audio of the camera being
handled. He uses diegetic sound to ground the film in the realm of the video
diary, connecting rather than distancing the viewer.
Dead horse
point (2006) 18:30
With this tour or the “old
west”, Britski visits numerous monuments to many famous western figures. While
each site could have many stories told about them, this quiet film leaves these
stories untold, emphasizing the forgotten nature of this history.
Shoulders on
a map (2004) 4:30
This film is like a photo album
of childhood travel. Britski fills screens with multiple images, frames within
the frame like the pastiche of an album, filled with the dominant image of
travel, the blur of landscape from the car window.
Down payment
on a dead horse (2006) 8 min
Britski successfully intertwines
stunningly beautiful winter landscapes with home movies of unabashedly
gun-obsessed family members into a severe critique of family, memory, and
masculinity.
Tortured by
sidewalks (2005) 2 min
The contrast between film and
video is never more extreme than here where Britski contrasts black and white
low res video with vibrant colour film in his portrait of Nova Scotia’s Peggy’s
Cove, giving his own unique spin to this highly documented site.
Moving
violation (2002) 5:30
Using Pixelvision and digital
video alongside 16mm film, Britski literally and figuratively reflects upon the changing face of the
city as beautiful and unique buildings are destroyed for the sake of pavement
and parking.
Dead horse
candidate (2011) 15 min
Over the course of a year,
Britski shot daily, stunning images on a 40 acre property of
biologist/naturalist filmmaker Bob Long. A feat of endurance and cinematographical
creativity, this film embraces the cycles of life and death with beauty but
without sentimentality.
Daybreak
(2011) 10 min
This film further confuses day and night, this time using altered night
footage shot on super-8 film and analog and digital video to create a new,
never before seen awakening in a Saskatchewan forest. Original score by Jason
Moberg.
Many of Jason Britski's films may be found on his VIMEO CHANNEL.
