Diffraction

Presented by la lumière collective and proposed by co-director Emma Roufs, DIFFRACTION is an experimental cinema program that invites viewers to discover the work of six Montreal-based artists who constantly question their relationship with the moving image.

In the first part, viewers discover six short 16mm films by Samy Benammar, Charles-André Coderre, Emma Roufs, Malena Szlam, Benjamin R.Taylor and Erin Weisgerber. The films offer a sensitive, visceral, photochemical and analog experience, in which we find life through film, and film as an integral part of life. By foregrounding nature and the body, this program emphasizes the material gestures of creation on photochemical film.

This 30-minute film programme is followed by MORAINE, a 30-minute live cinema performance by Erin Weisgerber accompanied by an electronic soundtrack composed by SUUNS drummer Liam O’Neill.

SHORT FILM PROGRAMME
Erin Weisgerber – Dans les cieux et sur la terre
2022, 16mm, b&w, sound, 12 mins

Malena Szlam – Lunar Almanac
2013 | 16mm | color | silent | 4 mins

Samy Benammar – kauaʻi ʻōʻō
2023 | Super 8 to 16mm | color | sound | 3 mins

Emma Roufs – spring rebirth at source du Pêcher
2024 | Super 8 to 16mm | color | sound | 2 mins

Benjamin R. Taylor – A Film About A Man Of A Certain Age
2023 | 16mm | b&w | sound | 5 mins 30

Charles-André Coderre – Fractures chimiques ON/OFF
2024 | 16mm | color-b&w | sound | 6 mins

PERFORMANCE MORAINE (30 minutes)

From ice blue chasms, through jagged mountain vistas, to the roaring Athabasca waterfalls, MORAINE is a live cinema performance that follows the course of glacier meltwater from its source to the river systems it feeds. After years away, Weisgerber returned to her home province of Alberta, Canada to film the oil refineries seen from her childhood home, the pumpjacks and traces of the petroleum industry written across her memory and the province’s landscape, and to document the effects of climate change on the Columbia Icefield and the lands its waters feed.

Shot on a 16mm hand-crank camera, hand-processed, and printed by the artist across multiple filmstocks in a collective darkroom, this close-to-the-heart material bears the mark of the filmmaker’s hand.
Accompanied by an electronic soundtrack of subtly evolving rhythmic patterns composed by SUUNS drummer Liam O’Neil, Weisgerber forges a tight audio-visual experience as she performs live manipulations across four 16mm projectors and an ever-evolving series of handmade film loops.

Cineville valid at the door and online on the day itself!