The Common Cinema: Vol. II

Screening Series
January 30, 2019. 6:00PM.

The Common Cinema: Vol. II
January 30th - February 2nd, 2019

Knot Project Space hosted its second volume of the Common Cinema initiative, the first of which took place in November 2018. Over the span of one week, the Common Cinema played host to a series of partner organisations who presented theatrical-style screenings in a temporary micro-cinema context, and at times facilitated group discussions following the work. For this second volume, which took place from January 30th - February 2nd, four consecutive evening screenings and events were presented in partnership with and relation to the Winnipeg Film Group, Canadian Film Institute, AxeNeo7 and OCanFilm Festival, respectively. These screenings featured local, national, and international content, explore a range of approaches to the moving image, and address urgent contemporary concerns.

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*Wednesday, January 30th*

Found in Translation: Time and Place [screening]
Guy Maddin, Berny Hi, Jaimz Asmundson, Matthew Rankin, Carole O-Brien, John Paizs, Cecilia Araneda, Hagere Selam
Presented in partnership with Winnipeg Film Group and Canadian Film Institute

Screening 7pm
71 min
Facebook Event

Info:
The Winnipeg Film Group’s Distribution Department has hundreds of amazing (funny, poignant, thoughtful, quirky) short films in their collection and they wanted to share them with a broader audience. Some of these uniquely Canadian stories were largely inaccessible to French audiences here in Canada and around the world. With a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, WFG were able to translate and subtitle over 30 titles.

About the Time and Place program:
“Movies mark the passage of time by providing a documentation of movement and change. They also, paradoxically perhaps, immortalize a moment in time, recording it for (re)viewing at any time in the future. The films in this program all look back: to filmmakers who have gone before, to fathers and mothers and grandmothers, to past events, and to the pop culture of the past.” -Stephanie Berrington

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*Thursday, January 31st*

Canadian Masters: William D. MacGivallray [discussion]
Presented in partnership with Canadian Film Institute

Info:
The Canadian Film Institute’s Canadian Masters series is an annual celebration of excellence in Canadian filmmaking, featuring extensive onstage interviews, special screenings, and audience discussions with some of the greatest names in Canadian film history.Canadian Film Institute Executive Director Tom McSorley will conduct an extensive, career-spanning onstage conversation with William D. MacGillivray and his creative producer partner, Terry Greenlaw, looking at their remarkable body of work together at Picture Plant, their ideas on cinema and media, and their collaborative artistic process. In English.

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*Friday, February 1st*

Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation [screening]
Manthia Diawara
Presented by Knot Project Space and in relation to Kosisochukwu Nnebe’s exhibition at AxeNeo7


Knot Project Space presented One World in Relation by Manthia Diawara, a documentary made in dialogue with the renowned and influential philosopher and poet, Édouard Glissant. The film, comprised of a series of interviews that Diawara conducted with Glissant during a transatlantic voyage, offers an introduction to Glissant’s complex constellation of thought that is both generous and profound.

The screening was positioned in relation to Kosisochukwu Nnebe’s past exhibition at AxeNeo7 titled ‘I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable’ which referenced and built from Glissant’s thinking, specifically by thinking through his notion of opacity. An artist talk by Nnebe took place on Saturday, February 2nd at AxeNeo7 at 2pm.

More about the film:
In 2009, filmmaker Manthia Diawara, along with his camera, documented his conversations with Martinican philosopher, writer, and poet Édouard Glissant aboard the Queen Mary II on their transatlantic journey from Southampton, England to New York City. This intellectual voyage encapsulates Glissant’s life’s work and studies on his theory of Relation and the concept of Tout-monde, amongst several other of his philosophical suppositions. Glissant is widely considered to be one of the most influential Caribbean thinkers and cultural commentators. Typically known for his written works, One World in Relation offers a more first-hand and accessible view into Glissant’s thoughts and beliefs on his own theories, as well as the topics of creolization, Rhizome, nation borders, and opacity. Produced only two years before his death, this documentary perhaps serves as a final summation of Glissant’s lauded work in the field of philosophy, and will prove to be especially useful for any student of philosophy, Caribbean or European studies.

About the filmmaker:
Malian filmmaker and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara is a celebrated author and director. He collaborated with author Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembène: The Making of African Cinema (1994), and has directed numourous films, including Rouch In Reverse (1995); In Search of Africa (1997); Bamako Sigi-Kan (2003); Who’s Afraid of Ngugi? (2006); and Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor (2015). His most recent film, An Opera of the World (2016) premiered at dOCUMENTA 14.Diawara has also published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora. He is the author of Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992), and In Search of Africa (1998). Dr. Diawara is Director of NYU’s Institute of Afro-American Affairs and Director of the Africana Studies Program. A native of Mali, he received his education in France and later traveled to the United States for his university studies. He has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania.

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*Saturday, February 2nd*

Secret War
Presented in partnership with OCanFilmfest

Info:
Secret War follows the emotional journey of two veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Mental illness is a growing issue in the military as suicide has taken more lives than the war Afghanistan. The War Horse Project uses equine therapy to help soldiers find peace and maybe a companion along the way. Shannon Lough, Emanuela Campanella, Sarah Turnbull and Fangliang Xu were students at the School of Journalism at Carleton University when they created the film in 2015. “Secret War” was an Official Selection at the Yorkton Film Festival that year.