Media City’s International Competition Jury announced the award-winning films from the 18th edition at the festival’s closing party on Saturday, May 26, 2012. Congratulations to the winners!

The winners are:

GRAND PRIZE

River Rites by Ben Russell (USA, video, 11.5 min, 2011)

SECOND PRIZE

This Harmonic Condenser Enginium by Bruce McClure (USA, 2 x 16mm, 18 min, 2012)

THIRD PRIZE

differently, Molussia by Nicolas Rey (France, 16mm, 81 min, 2012)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

The Corridor by Sarah Vanagt (Belgium, video, 4 min, 2011)

CAESARS WINDSOR BEST LOCAL FILM AWARD

Contact by Gerald McKay (Pinckney, video, 4 min, 2011)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

It’s a Fine Day by Iain Maitland (Detroit, video, 3 min, 2012)

Vanishing Acts by Scott Northrup (Detroit, video, 6.5 min, 2012)

The Jury:

Maria Palacios Cruz (Spain / London, UK)

Norbert Pfaffenbichler (Vienna, Austria)

Jonathan Walley (Ohio, USA)

MEDIA CITY 18 MEMBERSHIP DRAW

Congratulations to Karl Jirgens and Nathalie Roy, winners of the festival’s 2012 membership draw!

Congratulation Karl Jirgens, you’ve won a Caesars Windsor Getaway Package:

Congratulations Nathalie Roy, you’ve won the VIA Rail Corridor Prize:

Photo credit: Joséphine Michel

Filmmaker in Residence: Nicky Hamlyn (UK)

April 23–May 16, 2012

In celebration of the 18th edition of the festival (May 22-26, 2012), Media City will partner with the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto to host a three-week artist residency with renowned English filmmaker Nicky Hamlyn.

As part of this special engagement, Hamlyn will create site-specific films in Windsor and Detroit, intended for both cinema and gallery, culminating in their presentation during festival week. A complement to the “Correspondences” exhibition at the AGW – featuring works by Hamlyn and other British artists – this new residency program is intended to be the first in a series engaging contemporary film and video makers in productions, workshops and online publications.

Frame composite: Correspondences, Nicky Hamlyn, UK, 16mm, 15 min, 2011

Nicky Hamlyn studied Fine Art at the University of Reading. From 1979-1981 he was workshop organizer at the London Filmmaker’s Cooperative, where he co-founded the magazine “Undercut”. He is currently professor of Experimental Film at the University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone, Kent and visiting lecturer to the Royal College of Art, London, UK. His work has been exhibited at venues and festivals worldwide, including at six previous editions of Media City and in recent solo screenings at the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Double Negative (Montréal) and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. His book “Film Art Phenomena” was published by the British Film Institute (2003).

Film. Develop. Project.

FREE 16mm Film Workshops with Nicky Hamlyn

Art Gallery of Windsor: 401 Riverside Dr. West, Windsor, Ontario

Saturday, April 28 • Saturday, May 5 • Saturday, May 12 • 11:00 am – 4:30 pm

In partnership with the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto and the Art Gallery of Windsor, Media City is thrilled to offer FREE 16mm film workshops led by acclaimed English filmmaker Nicky Hamlyn.

During these one-day intensive workshops, participants will be introduced to basic 16mm film production. The workshops will begin with a technical introduction to the Bolex spring-wound camera, light meter and lights. After this, participants will jointly shoot a roll of black and white film which will then be hand-processed in a developing tank. When the film is dry, the work will be projected and a rough digital transfer will be made. Each participant will leave with a digital copy of the film to take away for editing. Although the workshop does not cover editing, there will be an introduction to the various ways in which film can be taken forward into post-production.

Registration for the workshops is now full. If you would like us to put your name on the cancellation list, please email Media City directly: mediacity@houseoftoast.ca

Curated by Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby, Courtisane Festival (Ghent, Belgium):  March 21–25, 2012

Standard Time (Michael Snow, 16mm, 8.5 min, 1967)

Standard Time was the second work to begin to explore the vocabulary of camera movement. It uses horizontal and vertical pans from a tripod. The soundtrack came from using the radio as a musical instrument. I “played” it using the station dial, the volume dial, and the bass and treble. The sound imitates, in a sense, the visual movements in the film. – Michael Snow

Canadian Pacific (David Rimmer, 16mm, 9 min, 1974)

Vancouver harbour, with its rail yards, mountains and passing ships, is a vista in fluid transformation as three winter months are reviewed in ten minutes. What interested me about the shot were the horizontals: train tracks, the water, the mountains, the sky. In the way those four elements would change. – David Rimmer

Opus 40 (Barbara Sternberg, 16mm, 14 min, 1979)

Interieur Interiors (To A.K.) (Vincent Grenier, 16mm, 15 min, 1978)

Trapline (Ellie Epp, 16mm, 18 min, 1976)

Time’s Wake (Once Removed) (Vincent Grenier, 16mm, 14 min, 1978)

Curated by Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby, University of Western Ontario: February 16, 2012

Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances (Samantha Rebello, UK, 16mm, 23 min, 2010)

Flesh, milk and meat are the subjects of an attempt to understand “substance” with medieval imagery. Bestiary illuminations, Romanesque carvings, medieval bells and living things reveal the strangeness and violence of being. – Samantha Rebello

Orchard (Julie Murray, US, 16mm, 8 min, 2004)

Much of the footage in Orchard is comprised of a 19th century ruin in an area known as Rostellen in southwest Ireland. The ruins are set deep in the woods, where the crumbling brick and mortar of the broken walls have become the anchor for the roots of slender trees–trees so uninhibited that they reach twenty feet in height and have thick roots that follow like slow lazy trickles of water, and in other places branch and wind over the brickwork in an arterial arrangement reminiscent of the human body. – Julie Murray

Rhinoceroses (Karl Kels, DE, 16mm, 9 min, 1987)

Rhinoceroses is organized in sequences with accelerated activity unnatural for its subject, but coherent within the process of cinematographic creation. By the end of the film the archaic beasts slowly and imperturbably cross the threshold of their cage. At that moment, with the camera recording what takes place in real time, the animal’s gestures regain an intrinsic timelessness, finding, in our company, the sort of peacefulness they need to exit the stage.

Pistrino (Nicky Hamlyn, UK, 16mm, 9 min, 2003)

A work in progress, assembled from time-lapse footage shot in Italy over a three-year period. I am interested in how the relative values of light and shade are transformed in certain images of natural objects and related phenomena so that, for example, a shadow becomes at least as strong as the object which casts it. This has the effect of complicating a reading of a given image from interactions between objects and the shadows they cast. In some of the shots I am also interested in how the perceptibility of the grain is affected by light and focus levels. – Nicky Hamlyn

Messages (Guy Sherwin, UK, 16mm, 35 min, 1984)

Messages was made over a 3-year period, when my daughter Maya was first learning to talk and write. It was my first film that involved gathering material around a central theme. That theme was not constant, but shifted its ground between ideas to do with childhood, with language, or with visual perception. A major source of inspiration for the film was Maya’s questions about the world, starting with questions to do with her perceptions of the physical world, and as she got older, questions more to do with social behaviour. These “innocent” questions (apart from being almost impossible to answer) seemed to me to be of a philosophical order that challenged long-established ‘truths’ about the world. They made it clear to me that “knowledge” which is hidden and acquired, supplants raw perception in many areas of our understanding. – Guy Sherwin

Fragrant Portals, Bright Particulars at the Edge of Space (David Gatten, US, 16mm, 12 min, 2003)

Early and late Wallace Stevens poems translated into Ogham, the 5th century “tree alphabet” derived from a notational system used by shepherds to record notes on their wooden staffs, and carved a letter at a time into a piece of semi–transparent flexible wood (black leader). “I think Stevens often found his mind on the trees–and his words in them”– David Gatten

Media City’s International Competition Jury announced the award-winning films from the 17th edition at the festival’s closing party on Saturday, May 28, 2011. Congratulations to the winners!

The winners are:

GRAND PRIZE:

Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances by Samantha Rebello (UK, 16mm, 23min, 2010)

SECOND PRIZE:

Bouquets 11-20 by Rose Lowder (France, 16mm, 11 min, 2005-2009)

THIRD PRIZE:

Shibuya – Tokyo by Tomonari Nishikawa (Japan, 16mm, 10 min, 2010)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Cinematographie by Philipp Fleischmann (Austria, 16mm, 6 min, 2009)

The Matter Propounded, of Its Possibility or Impossibility, Treated in Four Parts by David Gatten (USA, 16mm, 13 min, 2011)

The Jury:

Thomas Beard (New York) is founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn. He has organized screenings and exhibitions for Art in General, Artists Space, PERFORMA, the Museum of Modern Art New York and Tate Modern. He is currently at work on the film program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

William Raban (London UK) has been making films since 1970. Included among the many international presentations of his films are retrospective screenings at the Museum for Modern Art New York, the IFF Rotterdam and the 17th edition of Media City. Raban was the manager of the London Filmmakers Co-op workshop from 1972-1976 and is currently reader in Film at University of the Arts, London.

Daichi Saito (Montreal, CAN) studied literature and philosophy in the USA and Hindi and Sanskrit in India before turning to film. He is co-founder of Double Negative, a Montréal based film collective dedicated to experimental filmmaking. His films have screened at prominent festivals around the world and his most recent project won the Grand Prize at Media city in 2010.

Additionally we are pleased to announce the winner of the Media City 17 Membership Draw!
Congratulations to Myrna J Rugg of Ann Arbor, MI who has won a pair of round trip tickets between any two points served by VIA Rail between Windsor and Quebec City.

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The Media City Shuttle is the festival’s FREE transportation service. The shuttle departs daily from designated stops in Ann Arbor and Detroit and returns from Windsor each night of the festival (May 24-28, 2011). Book your seats in advance, you can register by completing the form below.

SCHEDULE

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

depart from Ann Arbor (327 Braun Court) 6:30pm
return from Detroit (Detroit Film Theatre) 12:00am Wednesday

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

depart from Ann Arbor (327 Braun Court) 5:30pm
depart from Detroit (College for Creative Studies – Ford Campus) 6:30pm
return from Windsor (Capitol Theatre) 12:00am

Thursday, May 26, 2011

depart from Ann Arbor (327 Braun Court) 4:00pm
depart from Detroit (College for Creative Studies – Ford Campus) 5:00pm
return from Windsor (Capitol Theatre) 12:00am

Friday, May 27, 2011

depart from Ann Arbor (327 Braun Court) 5:30pm
depart from Detroit (College for Creative Studies – Ford Campus) 6:30pm
return from Windsor (Capitol Theatre) 1:00am

Saturday, May 28, 2011

depart from Ann Arbor (327 Braun Court) 5:30pm
depart from Detroit (College for Creative Studies – Ford Campus) 6:30pm
return from Windsor (Capitol Theatre) 1:00am

BUS STOPS / AREAS FOR PICK-UP

Shuttles depart Ann Arbor from 327 Braun Court,
327 Braun Court at North 4th Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI
Metered parking is available off of East Kingsley Street and at North 4th Avenue

Shuttles depart Detroit from College for Creative Studies – Ford Campus
201 East Kirby Street, Detroit, MI
Pick-up in front of college main entrance at Kirby and John R. Parking at Brush St. garage bewteen Frederick and Ferry.

Shuttles return from Windsor from the Capitol Theatre
121 University Avenue West, Windsor, ON

View Media City Shuttle map in a larger map

SEATING IS LIMITED

Seating is available on a first come first serve basis at the time of boarding. You may also reserve your seat by completing the form below.

BORDER CROSSING

All persons, including U.S. citizens, travelling between the United States and Canada are required to present a valid passport, or other documents as determined by the Department of Homeland Security, these include a Passport Card and/or an Enhanced Michigan Driver’s License.
Please visit crossingmadeeasy.com for more information.

The Media City Shuttle is made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council, 327 Braun Court, College for Creative Studies, The Night Move and MetroTimes.

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Volunteers are the backbone of the festival. Without your invaluable services, the presentation of Media City would not be possible.
Whether you are a returning or a first-time volunteer, your assistance is vital to the preparation and execution the festival.

Volunteering is a great way to meet people from your community and around the world, immerse yourself in contemporary film and video art and have a great time. All Media City volunteers receive full access festival passes.

Volunteers are needed in the following areas:

• Guest Services

• Marketing and Promotion

• Hospitality

• Technical Assistance

• and many other areas!

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As a festival volunteer, you will play an integral role in the presentation of Media City and directly contribute to the vitality of international film and video art.

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Volunteer meetings happen weekly on Wednesdays, 7pm, @ Phog Lounge leading up to the festival.

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*The next volunteer meeting is scheduled for 7:00pm, Wednesday, May 2 @ Phog Lounge (157 University Avenue West, downtown Windsor)

Upcoming Volunteer Meetings will be:

Wednesday, May 9

Wednesday, May 16

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Stay up to date on volunteer meetings and info; join the 2012 Media City Volunteer Facebook page!

For more information about becoming a volunteer during Media City 18 contact Media City’s Volunteer Coordinator Michelle Soullière today at 519 982 0428 or media.city.volunteers@gmail.com.

The full festival catalogue and program will be available online and in print in early May. If you would like to receive a copy mailed directly to your address consider becoming a member. More info click here.

Welcome to the new Media City website. We are pleased to make use of our new home to announce the call for entries for the 17th annual edition of Media City Film Festival. The festival will take place May 24–27, 2011 with events and screenings in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan.

There are no entry fees and entrants may submit an unlimited number of works. For details including the festival entry form, FAQ and regulations (aussi en français, español, 日本語) feel free to explore Media City’s entries page.