Oona Mosna

KJE captures the grand finale of Emancipation Day, the annual Detroit River Fireworks, in 2014. Founded by Walter Perry, Emancipation Day was celebrated in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, every August 1 from 1932–1967 to mark the anniversary of British Parliment’s abolishment of slavery in 1834. Also known as The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth, the festival was large enough at one time to double the city’s population. As Emancipation Day became increasingly associated with the Freedom Movement across the border, the Windsor Police Department and city council began to push against the event, eventually culminating in its cancellation in reaction to the Detroit rebellion in 1967.

Shot on 16mm, this wondrous silent film study from avant-garde master Peter Hutton (At Sea) observes human movement across three distinct landscapes: Detroit, along the Hudson River Valley and in the Dallol Depression in Ethiopia.

An impressionist, kinetic exploration through the natural landscape of Fish Point Provincial Nature Reserve on Pelee Island (Ontario, Canada).

The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on ‘our’ earth.

An experimental look at the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, following two people as they navigate their own relationships to the spirit world and a place in between life and death.

Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, ALTIPLANO reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon.

“Mermaids flip a tale of twin detriments, domiciles cradle morph invaders, crocodile trails swallow two-legged twigs in a fecund mash of nature's outlaws... down in the Everglades.” (Fern Silva)

Through softly textured 16mm photography and regional iconography, Silva offers a modernist reflection on two of upstate New York’s most storied 19th century touchstones—the landscape painters of the Hudson River School and the legend of Rip Van Winkle—nodding to a few musical heroes along the way.

The Newest Olds is the second installment in Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Mazzolo’s cinematic diptych exploring the natural and urban environment within and surrounding the border region of Windsor–Detroit. Completed seven years after the release of Fish Point (2015), Mazollo’s revelatory study of light and landscape that animated the deciduous forest harbours and rare ecosystem at the southeastern tip of Pelee Island, The Newest Olds transforms Detroit’s iconic cityscapes, dislodging buildings from their foundations and collapsing the physical, political, and sensory boundaries between Canada and the United States through alchemical, in-camera, and optical printing techniques.

It Seems to Hang On is based on the true story of the serial killers Alton Coleman and Debra Brown, a young Black couple who cut a violent path beginning in the summer of 1984 through the American Midwest (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin). The dialogue spoken in the film is inspired and based on lyrics from the American soul duo (and couple) Ashford and Simpson's 1979 hit song "It Seems to Hang On".

a film by robert todd

Shot in Detroit and Windsor, Fluid Frontiers is the culmination of Ephraim Asili's project exploring the artist's relationship with the African Diaspora, structured around unrehearsed readings of poems originally published by the Detroit-based Broadside Press.

A study in contrast, colour and moiré pattern in a public park in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The film connects with a series of paintings by visual artist, Angela Allen.

Shot during a residency at Media City Film Festival and the Art Gallery of Windsor, "AGW 2nd Floor South" is part of a trilogy of works that use three distinct filmic procedures. Shot with a wide angle (10mm) lens at a rate of one frame every twenty seconds "AGW 2nd Floor South" compressed an entire day into two minutes. The work confirms, yet again, both Vertov and Kracauer's conviction that film can reveal aspects of the world otherwise inaccessible to human vision.

"Totem Pole '67" was shot frame by frame using extension tubes between the lens and camera body of a 16mm Bolex. The physical form of the subject comes directly to determine the outcome: it is both subject and camera support, that is, part of the technology of which it is also the subject. It is both sculpture and film.

A single time-lapse shot of the abandoned Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Recording subtle changes in light as it pierces the hollow skeleton of the building, the film was made at a rate of one frame every ten seconds. Part of a series of 7 films completed by the artist in Windsor-Detroit.

An artificial animation of the repetitively cycling GM logo sequence and naturally occurring movements, such as clouds reflected in the tower’s windows. This grid of flat planes breaks the reflections up into rectangular fragments that resemble film in both its appearance and manner of operation.

Filmed along the border between Argentina and Chile, "Desert Series II – Payogasta" is the next chapter in Price's luscious landscape project, "Sea Series" (2008-2016). Price makes use of the optical and mechanical possibilities of analog cinema, and the incredible landscape of the Andean mountains to create alchemical spells that swirl across the screen. Desert Series II – Payogasta is one of a few new films created by this celebrated avant-garde filmmaker, as part of Media City Film Festival's Underground Mines project.

Twin portraits: an immediate love between new friends considering motherhood under the roof of a fierce matriarch; and Cheru the dog, shortly after birthing five pups. A swim, a birth, a love, and a loss developed in hibiscus and lavender and saturated in deep blues.

Filmed along the border between Argentina and Chile, "Desert Series I – Atacama" is the next chapter in Price's luscious landscape project, "Sea Series" (2008-2016). Price makes use of the optical and mechanical possibilities of analog cinema, and the incredible landscape of the Andean mountains to create alchemical spells that swirl across the screen. "Desert Series I – Atacama" is one of a few new films created by this celebrated avant-garde filmmaker that were commissioned by Media City Film Festival's Underground Mines project.