Municipal Relaxation Module
Artistic rivalry infects the Winnipeg public service. Strong words are uttered, regretted, retracted.
Matthew Rankin
Director
Also Directed by Matthew Rankin
A completely hand-made historical micro-epic about the final minutes in the life of Winnipeg's doomed Second World War hero, Andrew Mynarski (1916-1944). Combining wartime aviation melodrama with classical and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, silhouettes, bleaching, scratching, hand-painting and rubbing letratone patterns directly on the celluloid) Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic photo-chemical war picture on the theme of self-sacrifice, immortality and jellyfish.
In the idealism and mutation of his home town of Winnipeg, the filmmaker Matthew Rankin launches a failed campaign of absolute inter-human solidarity entirely in Esperanto, the artificial language of world peace.
On a moonlit street corner, a Parisian waif sits dejectedly on a doorstep, mournfully clutching a dogless leash.
In the aftermath of the 1950 Winnipeg flood, Fernand floats listlessly through the sad, sunken landscape of ruin. His estranged wife prays for the drowned souls of Saint-Boniface.
An examination of Rory Lepine, who sent Winnipeg into a frenzy when he beat local legend Burton Cummings with a beer bottle in a 7-Eleven in 1985
An experimental montage of the exteriors of apartment buildings
Cattle Call is a high-speed animated documentary about the art of livestock auctioneering. Structured around the mesmerizing talents of 2007 Man-Sask Auctioneer Champion, Tim Dowler, and using a variety of classic and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, cut-outs, open-exposures, hole-punching and rubbing lettraset directly on the celluloid) filmmakers Maryniuk and Rankin have created images as dazzlingly abstract, absurd and adrenalizing as the incredible language of auctioneering itself. This hallucinogenic study of what Werner Herzog has termed the poetry of capitalism.
Self-portrait of the filmmaker seen through the mystical postmodern prism of Iranian cinema
Winnipeg Film Group. Deep in the winter of 1986. Guy Maddin is in the process of filming Tales from the Gimli Hospital and needs to rub a dead seagull on somebody's chest. Immediately, Dave Barber agrees, submitting his bare flesh to Maddin's road kill and to film history. (This film was commissioned by the Winnipeg Film Group'ss Cinematheque for its 25th anniversary, Silverscope)
