We’re Still Here: 50 Years of the Winnipeg Film Group
Curated by Scott Fitzpatrick and the staff of the WFG
Opening Reception: Friday, Dec. 13th 2024 7:00PM – 9:00PM
Show runs until January 25, 2024.
Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts
Suite 121-100 Arthur St.
We’re Still Here: 50 Years of the Winnipeg Film Group is an archival project commemorating the journey of the Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) over the past half-century. Curated from an accidental archive predominantly drawn from the late Dave Barber’s extensive collection of WFG-related materials and ephemera, the exhibition offers a lens into the multifaceted, contentious, and celebrated history of this artist-run center. Barber’s collection—a personal assemblage of posters, media clippings, film festival catalogs, photographs, programming materials, writings, grant applications, audiovisual materials, and other artifacts—is complemented by WFG’s institutional records, creating a mosaic, albeit inherently incomplete.
The exhibition underscores the critical role that artist-run centers like the WFG play as memory institutions, preserving the cultural and creative histories of their communities. However, it also highlights the significant challenges of documenting and archiving the dynamic, often ephemeral nature of these spaces and the artistic production they support. Many elements of WFG’s history are missing from the archive: zines, scripts, t-shirts, posters, film prints, and other materials that have been lost to time for various reasons, including destruction, theft, and the lack of resources to properly catalog, document, and preserve them. These omissions are poignant reminders of the fragility of cultural memory and the labor-intensive processes required to safeguard it.
Preserving the WFG’s history is very much a work in progress. The exhibition acknowledges the inherent incompleteness of any archival project, where omissions and accidents are inevitable. It is precisely this imperfection that gives the artist-run archive its vibrancy, opening up space for dialogue, reinterpretation, and a multiplicity of narratives. This allows the public to engage with the WFG’s history on their own terms.
As the WFG looks to its future, and aspires to become an official audiovisual archive that will be a resource not only for Prairie-based filmmakers and artists but also for researchers, students, educators, and the broader public. This vision requires immense labor, archival expertise, and funding. Preservation demands meticulous care: the digitization of aging media, the cataloging of countless materials, the construction of climate-controlled storage facilities, the development of user-friendly platforms for public access, and consultation with communities. While there are logistical challenges, the archive opens up deeper questions about how histories are told, who gets to tell them, and what stories are prioritized and cared for, or marginalized and left behind.
We’re Still Here is a call to action for the recognition and support of artist-run centers as vital cultural memory institutions. By showcasing the labor involved in interpreting its archives, this project highlights the precariousness of memory in artist-run culture. The materials on display, fragmented yet rich with meaning, invite visitors to piece together their own narratives about the WFG. This reflects the complexity of its legacy as a champion of independent film and creativity in Winnipeg, the enormous labor and love poured into this institution by its staff, members, and greater arts community, and the reality that the WFG has faced governance and operational challenges, like many of its artist-run kin, since its inception.
This archival project is both a celebration and a reminder: a celebration that the WFG is still here, despite everything, and a reminder of the ongoing collective responsibility to preserve and nurture artist-run cultural memory for future generations, as each dingy, dusty box we sifted through holds endless stories yet to be told.
– Leslie Supnet, Executive Director
Thank you to Dave Barber for safeguarding the WFG’s history.
Thank you to WFG Staff for their contributions to making this exhibition possible:
Jaimz Asmundson, Dylan Bailie, Alireza Bayat, Skye Callow, Jillian Groening, Saleena Haile, Dina Hamid, Howie Julien, Nic Kaneski, Jonathan Lee-Wing, Olivia Norquay, Eric Peterson, Karen Remoto, Luke Roach, Mulikat Sanni, Samantha Sarty, John Seymour, Ryan Steel, Autumn Sumner.
Thank you to Platform Centre and the staff of the WFG for their support of the exhibition, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Winnipeg Foundation and the family of Dave Barber for their generous support in making this exhibition possible.
As part of the exhibition we’ll be hosting an Active Research Lecture with Scott Fitzpatrick, Leslie Supnet and Madeline Bogoch, to expand on some of the methods and materials involved in the creation of the show, on a date in January to be announced. Stay tuned for more details!