Practical Dreamers

‘The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.’ – Man Ray

Welcome to the world of fringe movies. Here, artists have been busy putting queer shoulders to the wheels, or bending light to talk about First Nations rights (and making it funny, to boot), or demonstrating how a personality can be taken apart and put back together, all during a ten-minute movie which might take years to make.

In Practical Dreamers, twenty-seven artists dish about how they get it done and why it matters. The conversations are personal, up close and jargon free, smart without smarting.

Mike Hoolboom talks footage recycling with Alessa Cohene (Supposed To) and Jubal Brown (Life Is Pornography); investigates the documentaries of Donigan Cumming (My Dinner With Weegee); looks at the Middle East with Jayce Salloum (This Is Not Beirut); discusses identity with queer Asian avatars Richard Fung (Dirty Laundry), Midi Onodera (The Displaced View) and Ho Tam (The Yellow Pages), and First Nations vets Kent Monkman (Blood River) and Shelley Niro (Honey Moccasin); and addresses the visions of Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD).

AUTHOR

Mike Hoolboom

Mike Hoolboom (Essay) is a Canadian film/video artist. He is the author of three books: ‘Plague Years’ (1998), ‘Fringe Film in Canada’ (2000), and ‘Practical Dreamers’ (2008). He’s a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective (Toronto) and the experimental film coordinator at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (Toronto). He’s won over 30 international prizes, two lifetime achievement awards, and has enjoyed nine international retrospectives of his work. Alex MacKenzie (Interview) is a Vancouver media artist working with light projection and expanded cinema. He was the founder and curator of the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, the Blinding Light!! Cinema, and The Vancouver Underground Film Festival. His live media works are presented at festivals and underground screening spaces throughout Europe and North America. He is the co-editor of ‘DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art’ (Anvil Press, 2008). Brian Ganter (Editor) is a writer, educatorand filmmaker. He is the former Media Literacy Coordinator of the Pacific Cinematheque’s Education Department (Vancouver). In addition to a variety of short film and video works, Brian also wrote and directed the 2008 feature documentary ‘Metropole’ which has screened internationally in festivals and forums in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Brian is finishing his Ph.D. in cultural studies in the English Department at the University of Washington and teaches media and literacy studies at CapilanoUniversity in North Vancouver.