CODE Motion Pictures puts the focus on Canadian filmmakers
Industry Centre > Blogs > Articles > CODE Motion Pictures puts the focus on Canadian filmmakers
Posted by Kellie Ann Benz
on Wednesday, February 03, 2010.
Categories: Film, NSI, Articles
You might have heard, perhaps through gossip, word of mouth or even a little bird, that there’s this sporting event happening in Vancouver this month.
Yup, the Olympics have descended upon the wet coast. While the rest of the free world will be marvelling at the athletic prowess of physical over achievers, there’s a whole subset of pasty, flabby cinema geeks rejoicing too.
CODE motion Pictures is to Canadian filmmakers what the Athlete’s Village is to visiting Olympiads, a temporary home for the games. CODE stands for Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition, which houses online everything from curated photo essays to interactive art.
One of the cooler aspects of this expression explosion are the digital shorts commissioned to display on massive public screens in Vancouver and Whistler. The screens are already up and running and once the games kick off the short films will fan out to handheld devices and be viewable online.
The digital shorts mandate is to ‘explore the human body in motion’ and they were made by some of Canada’s most interesting emerging filmmakers, including a team made up of NSI alumni;
- 365 directed by Matt Embry (Alberta)
- Aerial Artistry directed by Talia Pura (Manitoba)
- Climb directed by Brett Bell (Saskatchewan)
- Duet directed by Raul Inglis (British Columbia)
- Geared-Up directed by Kenneth Sharman (British Columbia)
- Hand to Hand directed by Tamás Wormser (Quebec)
- Inuit High Kick directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (Nunavut)
- Joy directed by Zuzana Hudackova (Ontario)
- Momentum directed by Sheona McDonald (British Columbia)
- Patin Futé directed by Emmanuel Lagacé, Priscillia Rousseau, Jonathan Beaudry, Mélanie Breton, Diana M. Cortijo, and Christine Thériault (Québec)
- Play directed by Lisa Porter (Newfoundland and Labrador)
- RGB Move directed by Ryan Enn Hughes (Ontario)
- Sheng Qi (Souffle de vie) directed by Maxime-Claude L'Écuyer (Québec)
- Skywriter directed by Josh Usheroff (Quebec)
- Spring directed by Lynne Kamm (Ontario) featuring several NSI alumni. Read more or visit the official Spring website.
- The Rushing of Time directed by Daniel Conrad (British Columbia)
Check out details about all these films on the CODE website.
What’s of interest with all these commissioned short films is the way in which provincial agencies across the country came together to fund them.
Working nationally with Telefilm Canada, the Association of Provincial and Territorial Film Funding Agencies supported each of these original shorts. Like the new RAV line to the airport, could another legacy of these games be an annual commission of downloadable digital shorts from Canada’s best and brightest?
That question is easily answered with this: depends if there’s an audience for it.
Random spot checks on the big screen at the corner of Robson and Hornby this last week suggests there is. Snuggled comfortably in between the pillars of the Vancouver Art Gallery steps (typically day camp to what’s left of the punk movement – all eight of them) the big screen can’t help but be noticed.
Pedestrians were indeed stopping and watching. They did seem engaged, interested and remained for the final piece. Mind you, this area is the new hub of downtown spontaneous entertainment or spontainment, what with the music stage/ice rink combo pack just below street level.
Actually, if you position yourself strategically in this one tiny block in Vancouver you can experience music, view a short film and watch skater after skater land on their bottom dollar in one blink.
Still, the digital shorts up on the big screen looming over Vancouverites and her visitors during the Olympics is reason enough to meander around downtown Vancouver in February.
- Kellie Ann Benz is a columnist who writes about short film on the NSI website and also runs her own blog The Shorts Report -
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Views expressed here are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).
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The views expressed here are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).