Alex MacKenzie

Follows childhood friends turned professional comedians, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, the founders of the Found Footage Festival. When Nick and Joe book their gag strongman routine on unsuspecting morning news shows, their pranks go viral and land them in federal court with a vengeful media conglomerate. The stress of the lawsuit and pressure to continue their pranks threatens their livelihood and tests their lifelong friendship.

"Think Before You Think" is a portrait of film poet, animator and artist Rick Raxlen. Shot on 16mm film and digital video at his Victoria, BC home and studio over the course of a year, the film follows Raxlen’s daily practice, uncovering the rituals and gestures of a creative process. Mining the highly specific and personal nature of this life-sized project, excerpts from Raxlen’s films, drawings, paintings and mark-making from a 50+ year art practice combine with hand-processed and manipulated film materials to play off the rites and relaxed rigour of his unique approach to making a life.

An ode to childhood and nature's passing in an urban world, contrasting refilmed vintage Vancouver tourist bureau promos with original negative Tri-X shot from the back porch and bucket processed.

A suite in four movements performed with two 16mm projectors. Created with a series of film loops rendered individually with sprayed paint, scraped and abraded softened black emulsion, pin and hole punctures, india ink craquelure and meticulous frame by frame application. By manipulating the image, introducing carefully orchestrated lens interference with colour gels, frame-edge masking, vignetting and glass objects, Phosphene Induces a variation on closed-eye vision and non-light hallucination: a subtly immersive and sublime sculpting of light.

An expanded cinema work exploring the transitional space between image and abstraction, and nature and culture.

A readymade of sorts, animating the tarmac as landing protocols fuse with painted arrows and guidelines on bruised asphalt. Distinct concrete squared segments are reinterpreted as film frames flickering past, with this hypnotic and immersive taxiing finally giving way to a rush of unbuckling.

Two loops taken from a French film promoting early shopping mall culture are bipacked and heavily manipulated beyond the lens to create a dreamlike dimensional space whose shadowed figure is forever travelling across the frame to find their way out of the delusion of capital. Performed with a single 16mm projector. Commissioned by the Sawdust Collector (a curatorial collective based in Vancouver) and performed with live audio by Clare Kenny.

Shot near the Falaise Park Iris Film Collective Fieldhouse, processed at Niagara Film Lab in Toronto and then buried in the nearby garden. A literal Landscape Film. Made for the inaugural One Take Super 8 event in Vancouver, presented by Iris Film Collective. Audio: The Cyrillic Typerwriter's Freshly Minted Medal.