LIFT presents: The Madvo Collection Commissioning Project
50 mins
Introduced by Anna Kipervaser (AMI faculty and recent artist-in-residence at LIFT)
In 2014, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto received a donation of a 200-reel collection of the films and outtakes of local documentary filmmaker Jacques Madvo. Madvo travelled the world from the 1960s to the 1980s, shooting 16mm footage that made its way into the People and Places documentaries he produced for TVO. The footage is a treasure trove of documentation of international culture and life from almost a half-century ago. With the assistance of an Initiatives Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, LIFT commissioned eight films and videos that incorporate the Madvo collection footage as a starting point.
The participating filmmakers include both veterans of the field and emerging filmmakers. Each of them made works that explore personal cultural connections, interrogate the nature of documentary and look at the specific material qualities of filmmaking that the footage inspired. The resulting films are works that foreground the artistic resonance of the Madvo footage and find clues to our contemporary world. Two filmmaking teams even travelled to Colombia and Iran to supplement Madvo’s footage with present-day experiences, expanding Madvo’s quest into the modern world. The filmmakers include Stephen Broomer, Ben Donoghue and Julieta María, Franci Duran, Zoë Heyn-Jones, Mike Hoolboom, Fraser McCallum, Madi Piller, and the filmmaking trio of Faraz Anoushahpour, Parastoo Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko.
Program 1 details below; Program 2 will screen in 2019.
Program 1
Fanfare
Fraser McCallum
9 min.
Soy un ser cuyas raíces // I am a being whose roots
Zoë Heyn-Jones
12 min.
Chooka
Faraz Anoushahpour, Parastoo Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko
20 min.
Fountains of Paris
Stephen Broomer
8 min.
Passage
Ajla Odobašić
5 min.
