With the release Matthew Rankin’s astonishing first feature The Twentieth Century which won Best First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival he joins the front ranks of great Canadian filmmakers. A founding member of the artist collective L’Atelier national du Manitoba (with Walter Forsberg & Mike Maryniuk) he also created a remarkable series of imaginative shorts which traveled to Sundance and festivals around the world. In many of these shorts Matthew explores a hybrid of documentary and experimental drama with a sharp, satirical sense of humour and a spectacular visual sense. Whether working with stop-motion, hand-painting, scratching or bleaching Matthew discovers worlds never seen before.
I Dream of Driftwood, Directed by Matthew Rankin , 2006, Canada, 3 min
I Dream of Driftwood is a delirious super-8 ransom note cobbled together out of the baroque letters and grandiose names of Winnipeg apartment buildings. Idealistic, absurd and positively insane with Stockholm syndrome, the film glorifies all the smoldering romance that these living spaces fail to provide.
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Tabula Rasa, Directed by Matthew Rankin, 2007, Canada, 10 min
In the aftermath of the 1950 Winnipeg flood, Fernand floats listlessly through the sunken ruins while Marie-Oiseau prays for a miracle.
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Cattle Call, Directed by Mike Maryniuk and Matthew Rankin 2008, Canada, 4 min
Panic-paced animated documentary about the art of livestock auctioneering.
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Discount Everything, Directed by Matthew Rankin 2016, Canada, 1:30 min
A short history of Kern Hill Furniture Co-op and the media art of Nick Hill.
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Negativipeg, Directed by Matthew Rankin , 2010, Canada, 15:40 min
Negativipeg tells the story of Rory Lepine, who shot to Herostratic fame in 1985 when he attacked Winnipeg rock legend Burton Cummings with a beer bottle in a North End 7-Eleven. Narrated by Lepine himself, the film meditates on this mysterious act of destruction and suggests that Winnipeg might have an attitude problem.
*Official Selection 2011 Sundance Film Festival, American Film Institute 2011 *Los Angeles, Official Selection 2010 Toronto International Film Festival
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Mynarski: Death Plummet, Directed by Matthew Rankin , 2014, Canada, 8 min
A completely hand-made historical micro-epic about the final minutes of Winnipeg’s doomed Second World War hero, Andrew Mynarski. Combining aviation agitprop and abstract animation, Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic, photo-chemical war picture on the theme of self-sacrifice, infinity and jellyfish.
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The Tesla World Light , Directed by Matthew Rankin, 2017, Canada 8 min
New York, 1905. Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to J.P. Morgan, his onetime benefactor. Inspired by real events, this electrifying short is a spectacular burst of image and sound that draws as much from the tradition of avant-garde cinema as it does from animated documentary
