About the screening
Digital Arts Resource Centre is excited to present our annual Resolution screening! Resolution is a public screening featuring a selection of works created by DARC members during the previous year.
Join us in Arts Court Theatre on Thursday, January 23 at 7PM. Artists will be in attendance to participate in a brief Q&A with the audience followed by a reception at Arts Court Studio.
RESOLUTION 2025 features works by Conor DeVries, Conrad Osei-Bonsu, Pixie Cram, aenl, Chris Cowan, Penny McCann, Emilie Azevedo, Yuli Sato, and Bridget Farr.
RESOLUTION 2025
Digital Arts Resource Centre (DARC) Annual Screening: A juried Selection of Members’ works created during the past year.
When: January 23, 7PM EST
Where: Arts Court Theatre
Cost: Free Admission ($10 suggested donation)
Program Schedule
Doors: 6:30pm
Screening: 7:00pm
Q&A: 7:45pm
Reception: 8:15pm
About the WORKS
The Sun and The Stars
Music video for Orchidae’s first single of her upcoming album being released at the end of 2024.
An impressive music video that showcases the talent of the director and the artist, elevating both of their work.
CONOR DEVRIES
Conor is an award winning documentary filmmaker and professional cinematographer. His films have been screened at festivals internationally and toured across Canada. His films primarily focus on social and environmental issues including the rising cost of education in The Right to Learn, food waste and dumpster diving in Wasted, and most recently the on-going logging of Algonquin Provincial Park in Logging Algonquin. Most of this work is meant to start a conversation; ideas and perspectives to challenge the norm and spark transformation as a result.
The Dognapping
The Dognapping is a ridiculous dark comedy about a character looking for something to belong to – in this case, a dog. I tried to make a docu-style film with as limited a set as we could get. It’s a bit experimental in its imagery but narrative film should always test ideas. I believe in the absurdist take that anybody trying to steal a dog and successfully doing it, so I dramatizes it. I hope audiences enjoy the tone and ambience this short film offers, especially for audiences outside of Toronto where the film was shot.
Mysterious, creepy, and exceptionally well made!
CONRAD OSEI-BONSU
Conrad Osei-Bonsu is a Nigerian-Ghanaian independent filmmaker, stand up-writer, and digital producer currently living and working in Toronto. He started his career performing comedy and making independent video projects for over 10 years – music videos, sketches, short films and documentaries etc, while working full time in the world of digital marketing to expand his palette for marketing design and large-scale storytelling.
Capsize
A music video for Plumes track, Capsize. The video consists of super-8 footage from 2006 and 2007 of Veronica Charnley (aka Plumes) walking near the Ottawa River, and of a field and barn in Vermont.
Old footage, new insights. The jury found that Pixie's revisiting of old film reveals how disparate memories grow more and more entwined.
PIXIE CRAM
Pixie Cram is a filmmaker, director and media artist based in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. Her fiction and stop-motion animation films have been screened at festivals across Canada and internationally. On top of her own art practice, she works as a freelance videographer and editor. She teaches screenwriting at Carleton University.
A Fold in the Flesh of the World
A Fold in the Flesh of the World is a video centred on virtual embodiment. Bringing together contemporary feminist film theory with 1990s techno-tribalism, this project arises from a deep fascination with the ways that the net has been conceived of as a transcendent space. The video follows an unidentified protagonist as they are teleported from their office desk-meets-Wiccan altar into a hallucinogenic virtual cave populated by Biblical angels and medieval demons. The work culminates in an orgiastic, Bacchanalian dance, functioning as a playful yet horrific thought experiment for techno-utopian ideals. At its core, A Fold in the Flesh of the World speaks to humanity’s enduring pursuit for a higher power, questioning the ways that technology has been—and continues to be—implicated in this pursuit.
An expertly-produced, thought-provoking short video, this is a piece that stays with you, forcing us to question our relationship with technology.
aenl (Anna Eyler + Nicolas Lapointe)
deflowered
“deflowered” is part of a larger body of work consisting of a series of digital animations and accompanying paintings, which aims to explore the extreme complexities of the experience of motherhood. Using a multi-stage image-making process rooted at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence, I use my own original painted artworks as visual prompts, to create short digital animations using AI driven image generating software. The collaboration between myself and an artificial intelligence becomes a quest to provide a contemporary perspective on the exploration of the human psyche, and to invite the viewer to challenge not only their own narratives of “normal” human reproduction, but to reconsider the very essence of artistic creation.
This beautiful short is a meditation on a topic that is on all of our minds: how can artists work with AI, and what are its implications for the future?
CHRIS COWAN
Chris Cowan is a multidisciplinary artist, living in the Ottawa Valley. She holds a MFA in Oil Painting from Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan, a and BFA from NSCAD University. In 2024, Chris was an artist in residence at the Rockland Woods Residency in Seattle, Washington. Chris’ work explores the narratives of fertility, reproduction, and women’s health. She produces highly detailed surrealist paintings and short animations with the help of AI image generating software. Chris’s work aims to subvert depictions of motherhood as they present in Western art. Her work prompts contemplation on the nature of creativity, the evolving role of technology in the arts, and the symbiotic relationship between the artist and the tools they employ.
River
A hand-processed black and white study of the Ottawa River in winter. Commissioned by the Lightproof Film Collective with sound design by Eric Walker.
A beautiful black-and-white experimental short capturing the Ottawa River in winter made using hand-processed techniques rarely seen in the digital age.
PENNY MCCANN
Penny McCann’s body of work spans thirty years and encompasses both narrative and experimental films and video. Since 2000, she has been engaged in creating a body of experimental films that journeys through an abstract and poetic terrain, forming a sustained meditation on landscape, place and time. According to Cecilia Araneda in her essay titled Penny McCann: Within the Unsaid, A Response to Land Lines (of time and place) in no particular order: “McCann intervenes with our sense of the familiar with her use of hand-crafted analogue filmmaking approaches … purposefully setting it back into a kind of suspension that we immediately associate with the dream state of processing memories.”
finsta
It’s 2024, attention is the new currency and we’re all actors on a platform where everyone else’s life is perfect. Welcome to FINSTA, a documentary about secondary Instagram accounts and surveillance capitalism.
A fascinating deep-dive into the fast-moving, often-chaotic world of social media, 'Finsta' is as educational as it is entertaining.
EMILIE AZEVEDO
Emilie Azevedo (she/they) is a digital storyteller and freelance creator. Their films use humour to criticize and bring awareness to social issues, they are especially concerned with internet culture and media studies. As an independent documentary filmmaker, they use a mix of investigative journalism and creative storytelling to amplify narratives forsaken by the mainstream media.
Disintegration (105 Frames)
Disintegration (105 frames) is an experimental stop-motion that explores the physicality of film and the passage of time. By intentionally manipulating and degrading 35mm negatives, the film creates a visually striking and meditative experience through a series of hand-crafted alterations. Thumbtack pokes, strokes of acrylic paint, and steel scrubber scrapes uniquely affect the emulsion, transforming clear, tangible imagery into an increasingly abstract and ephemeral sequence. The project invites viewers to contemplate the impermanence of both physical objects and memories.
Yuli shows us that when memories fade, they are replaced by something new. Something more emotional, deeper, closer to reality, perhaps?
YULI SATO
- Yuli's Website
- @yulisato
Yuli Sato (b. 1990) is a photographer, curator, and writer living in Ottawa, Canada. She creates analog photographic works and limited-edition zines that delve into themes of nostalgia and memory, portraiture, and shifting emotional and physical landscapes. Her practice centers on using photography as a narrative medium, drawing from personal archives to reinterpret and reshape past realities.
FLO
Flo is a meditative portrayal of a nurse’s solitary journey of survival and self-discovery during WWII. Inspired by a true story, the film follows Flo, a woman isolated in a remote cabin as she waits for her husband’s return from war. Nature’s elements – wind, water, and earth – help Flo accept that the life she had imagined has faded away. Shot on a hand-cranked 16mm camera, Flo was filmed in the very cabin where the real-life nurse sought refuge.
A reverie of a lost romance from the Second World War which seems all too current. The jury found Bridget's refreshing take on growth from grief as a reminder of our ability to heal.
BRIDGET FARR
Bridget Farr is an analogue film artist with a BA in Film Studies and an Honours Degree in Photographic Arts. Her films have been screened at major festivals, including Ann Arbor, Brooklyn, and Vancouver International Film Festivals. Her photography has exhibited internationally, alongside artists like Annie Leibovitz. In 2007, she helped launch the Burundi Film Centre, and in 2013, the Canadian Film Institute honoured her with a retrospective of her work. She co-founded the Lightproof Film Collective in 2020 and also creates commissioned 16mm films under Your Life, On Film.
À portée de mots
Regardez autour de vous. Où que vous soyez — chez vous, dehors, dans une salle d’attente — vous avez fort probablement, dans votre champ de vision, des mots. Au moins quelques uns. Suffisamment de mots pour vous mettre à composer, consciemment ou pas, des poèmes ; pour vous mettre à effleurer des images inédites ; pour humer le bouillon poétique qui habite le lieu où vous êtes. Produit pour le Salon du livre de l’Outaouais
Earnest, intriguing, charming and very well paced. À portée de mots is a piece I'd happily watch more than once.
Marie-Ève Fontaine & Guillaume Saindon
Storytelling is at the heart of multidisciplinary artist Marie-Ève Fontaine. After completing a theatre degree at the University of Ottawa, Marie-Ève has participated in the development of countless theatre, storytelling and puppetry projects as a creator, author, actor, puppeteer and director across the country. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Marie-Ève has started producing videos featuring poetry, puppets and wild ideas. She collaborates regularly with accomplice Guillaume Saindon through their production company 2359. Guillaume works as a theatre and film director, video designer and software developer in live and interactive arts. His work has been presented across Canada and in a variety of festivals. After completing his B.A. in theatre at the University of Ottawa and a film degree from the Prague Film School, he went on to do an MA in Digital Narratives from the Internationale Filmschule Köln in Germany. He studied the contribution of digitality in live art forms. He then completed an M.F.A. in theatre directing at the University of Ottawa. His research and practice revolve around the notions of immersion, interaction, ludology and transmedia. He is now artist in residence at the Théâtre du Trillium and regularly works with Marie-Ève Fontaine through their production company 2359.
Untitled (Moiroloi)
Court exercice autour du concept grecque de “Moiroloi”, ou “lament”. Réalisé au tout début de la pandémie dans le cadre d’un séminaire de maîtrise, l’exercice aborde la perte de l’extérieur et de sens exacerbé par la pandémie. L’esthétique est inspiré du travail du vidéaste expérimental Japonais Takashi Ito.
Guillaume Saindon’s Untitled (Moiroloi) explores lamentation through repetition, immersive sound, and a great sense of rhythm.
Guillaume Saindon
Guillaume works as a theatre and film director, video designer and software developer in live and interactive arts. His work has been presented across Canada and in a variety of festivals. After completing his B.A. in theatre at the University of Ottawa and a film degree from the Prague Film School, he went on to do an MA in Digital Narratives from the Internationale Filmschule Köln in Germany. He studied the contribution of digitality in live art forms. He then completed an M.F.A. in theatre directing at the University of Ottawa. His research and practice revolve around the notions of immersion, interaction, ludology and transmedia. He is now artist in residence at the Théâtre du Trillium and regularly works with Marie-Ève Fontaine through their production company 2359.
Events in the tunnel
Drawn from Super 8 films in the artists’ personal archives as well as found amateur 8mm footage, Events in the Tunnel presents an absurdist abbreviated retelling of Canada’s colonial history as defined by that great colonial trope, the cross-country train trip. In the transitional void of a train tunnel, we witness familiar 19th and 20th century paradigms of white middle-class conformity as represented by images of travel, amusement, and domesticity, with Canadian culture embodied by a chimeric portrayal of the early 20th century painter Tom Thomson. Sound design by Chris Ikonomopoulos.
Penny McCann and Eric Walker deliver a great short for the small gauge fans out there featuring Super 8 footage.
Penny McCann & Eric Walker
- @penny.mccann2
- @pennymccann_1
- @PenelopeMC22
Events in the Tunnel marks the first co-directing project by life partners and artists Penny McCann and Eric Walker. Penny McCann’s body of media artwork spans thirty years and encompasses both narrative and experimental films and video. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, Michigan), the Hamburg International Short Film Festival (Hamburg, Germany), the Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa, Ontario), and the Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montreal, Québec). Visual and media artist Eric Walker studied video art with Dara Birnbaum at the Nova Scotia College of Art in the 1970’s. His artwork is in numerous public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Owens Art Gallery, and the Ottawa Art Gallery.
Resonance
RESONANCE is a short documentary film about memory. Sam Wood was 23 when he found an old photo album belonging to his father with photos taken of him at the exact same age. In the interview about the photo album that followed, Sam and his father discuss family history and their personal differences. This serves as a launching point to investigate larger themes of memory: what is preserved in our histories, what is discarded, and how complicated ‘memories’ really are.
Sam Wood
Sam Wood is a musician, videomaker, and occasional photographer based out of Ottawa. He received his BA in Music Studies in 2017, and his MFA in Film Studies 2019. Sam has performed music in venues across the province, and is pleased to have had the support of the Digital Arts Resource Centre to complete his first in-depth video project: RESONANCE. His main interests are in the documentary form and how it can be used to explore memory construction, concepts of truth, and fiction versus non-fiction. While not working on videos, you’ll find Sam around the city performing music or getting shots for his photography project (@ottstreetart on Instagram).
Dilatory Transmission
Filmed with a vintage vidicon tube camera, Dilatory Transmission is an experimental narrative short film depicting a retrofuturistic newscast exploring the alienating effects of the endless media and content under late-stage capitalism. Take a glimpse into the dystopian city of Monopolis through an evening spent watching the nightly news. Due to quarantine restraints, the film was developed in isolation solely by A. John Yates. With a unique approach to special effects, this film combines computer-generated imagery with the outdated technique of rear projection. Local musician Jacob Gonato elevates the film with a sensational score spanning from catchy jingles to improvised synth droning.
An endearing short from Aidan John Yates. Dilatory Transmission's dedication to pushing its aesthetic language and world building is strangely comforting.
Aidan John Yates
Aidan Yates is an amateur filmmaker, animator and sculptor who lives in Ottawa. His work explores themes of isolation, societal conformance and late-stage capitalism. He has a passion for experimenting with vintage technologies, favouring super 8 film and vidicon tube video. He is currently studying visual arts at Canterbury High School and aims to pursue film animation or production at the post-secondary level next year.
About the Jury
Alexander CRUZ
Alexander is a filmmaker out of Hull, Quebec. His films have been screened internationally and won numerous awards for his unique exploration of themes like belonging, addiction, and reconciliation, most recently directing the acclaimed drama-thriller Le genre qui tue (2023) and the documentary Portrait of a Songwriter (2023).
Nickie Shobeiry
A filmmaker, journalist and comms professional, Nickie Shobeiry is a second-gen Iranian sharing stories of joy from her culture.
Nickie has produced award-winning documentaries for Bell and CBC, and is a fellow of the Netflix-Banff Diversity of Voices for her screenwriting. Her most recent CBC short doc, ‘Good Nose’, is her directorial debut; a love-letter to Iranian noses, the doc includes subjects like Samin Nosrat, NYT best-selling author and creator of Netflix’s ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’.
As a journalist, Nickie has bylines in publications like Globe & Mail, Shondaland and CBC.
Nickie’s throughline? Social good through storytelling.
daniel pelissier
D.R.P. is an artist living deep in the woods of Val Des Monts Quebec.
