DVD PUBLICATIONS
In 2003, on the eve of the Winnipeg Film Group's 30th anniversary, the organization commenced a historic, six-DVD collection providing a specially curated selection of works completed by Winnipeg Film Group members in its first three decades. The filmmaker-curators were selected by the Winnipeg Film Group for their combined achievement as artists and their deep understanding of the body of work of Manitoba filmmakers, and were requested to ensure each of the curators had at least one work featured in the entire six-set DVD collection.
To date, four of the DVD publications have been released, and the fifth - curated by Patrick Lowe and representing work produced during the 70s - is currently in progress, to be released in 2010. The sixth and final DVD, representing filmmakers that emerged in the new millennium and curated collectively by Cecilia Araneda, Danishka Esterhazy and Solomon Nagler, will be released in the future.
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The Sensationalists of the 90s
Curated by Jeffrey Erbach
"There was a pocket of time, not so long ago, when members of a small artistic collective, working under the crushing weight of some towering filmmaking giants, managed to peer out from the smothering blanket of obscurity and bend a new fork in the group’s already impressive history. Working out of the land island of Winnipeg, filmmakers who saw nothing outward instead looked inward, channelling their sense of loneliness and other-ness into personal, expressionistic work deemed successful if only for its artistic viability."
MORE INFO / BUY READ THE CURATORIAL ESSAY
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Ladies First: Ladies' Firsts
Curated by Carole O'Brien
"It’s true. The Winnipeg Film Group is not teeming with women filmmakers. Hardly surprising given about 90% of the film industry is still dominated by men. But despite their low numbers, the women at our co-op have always managed to keep up with their male counterparts, artistically and technically. Until the late eighties, however, few of them made their own films, and those who did made documentaries. Public policy and the democratization of filmmaking technology is now changing the production landscape. For the past 15 years, a distinctly female voice can be heard. Out There. And at the Film Group, that voice is getting louder."
MORE INFO / BUY READ THE CURATORIAL ESSAY
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Illusion of Normalcy: Escaping the 80s
Curated by Guy Maddin, with essay by Shereen Jerrett
"We were so normal, shooting those films, and we still are. And we are still out there. As you read this we will still be carefully threading film into our cameras, in search of that other room, outside this illusion of normalcy. Sometimes we get something, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes when you look into that dark room, the room looks back. Good thing there is glass between us… or is there? John and I had a running bet for many years about which member of the WFG was going to climb to the top of the Artspace building and start taking potshots. Sometimes we put the money on ourselves. Filmmaking is like that."
MORE INFO / BUY READ THE CURATORIAL ESSAY
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Isolation in the 1980s
Curated by John Kozak
"Considering the fertile creative environment that existed at the Winnipeg Film Group during this period it is not surprising that there was such a volume of production, nor is it surprising that the quality was so high. What is puzzling is that so many of the films explored thematically similar terrain. The filmmakers that had the courage to venture into drama, and the confidence to produce longer and more complex films were marshalling their resources to explore predominantly one theme, isolation."
MORE INFO / BUY READ THE CURATORIAL ESSAY
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