Comptines
Canada 1986 , 4 min
One day in Belfast, women hear that a prisoner has died and they angrily congregate in the street. Armed with garbage can lids, they bang on the ground to mark the bleak courage of the ninth hunger striker to die in silence. "With Comptines, I wanted to suggest the transition between the daily blunt reality and the inner search for survival when common sense becomes unbearable. Also I had the naive and pretentious goal of making a rock video with something to say." Diane Poitras from the article, "Committed to Memory," by Lisa Steele.
About iFpod
For the 2012 festival, Images is looking back to its first edition. Taking place over four days in June, 1988, the first Images Festival was a snapshot in a moment of contemporary film and video art in Canada. The 1988 festival was programmed by a team of artists and other fixtures on the local film scene and included Cameron Bailey, Richard Fung, Marc Glassman, Annette Mangaard, Janine Marchessault, Paulette Phillips, Lisa Steele, Kim Tomczak and Ross Turnbull. Featuring 51 films and videos organized into eight programs, the lineup of the festival reads like a hit list of the most significant figures in Canadian art history: Philip Hoffman, Vera Frenkel, Paul Wong, Richard Kerr, Jan Peacock, Sara Diamond, Michael Snow, R. Bruce Elder and Steve Reinke (under the early pseudonym Troy Beuys).
A complete list of the works and
programs is printed here as a reproduction of the original handbill made
in 1988 and on our website we’ll be presenting a temporary archive of as
many of these works as we can track down for you to enjoy!
Head over to www.imagesfestival.com/ifpod for a little history lesson.
