INTRO
Expanding on the concept of last year's program, below zero: new work from the saskatchewan filmpool cooperative, two below zero once again bridges the cinematic divide between the prairies and Quebec. Focusing on short films produced in and about Saskatchewan over the past ten odd years, this one-night screening event culls together an eclectic cross-section of personal/experimental work by new, emerging and established filmmakers alike. Organized in association with Concordia University, the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, the Saskatchewan Filmpool and SaskFilm.

LAND | ESCAPE | STUDIES
Saskatchewan is a grid. Every line is a road. Along these roads used to be a town every 10km, back when moving grain was still in business. Now it's hard to imagine any equivalent tether besides an attraction to the landscape itself. But living with so much open space and so little opportunity teaches you to plan an escape route. A map of Saskatchewan is, therefore, a place of imagination. That's why so many people leave and why so many return. The filmmakers that unite this program know what's it like to move around (making moving pictures, and moves meant). The films presented in two below zero negotiate (dis)location, grafting personal stories onto physical, social and imaginary landscapes. Some stoke home fires; others fashion fervid dreams of arrival and escape. Together they are the feverish postcards scrawled in back seats, the anxious, impassioned letters from home, the quiet, attentive glimpses of daily activity, the quick-fire snapshots of life caught in-transit. These films are made by Saskatchewan and they're for real.

EXIT WOUNDS
The mass exodus of Saskatchewan-based filmmakers over the past decade is nothing short of alarming: over half the practitioners featured here currently live elsewhere. Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Taiwan, Japan - these are the new homes, transient residences. Montreal in particular has been a refuge for prairie film experimentalists: both Richard Kerr and Roy Cross teach at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, where Eason/Rollo/Kashmere currently study. Others including Troy Rhoades, Terryll Loffler and robert.daniel.pytlyk are on their way. It's not hard to understand why. Despite the only university film production program between the East and West Coasts, the fortifying presence of the Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-op, and funding bodies such as the Filmpool, SaskFilm and the Saskatchewan Arts Board, opportunities for creative and professional growth are limited. Saskatchewan's Film Industry, font of (mainly) appalling low-rent "commercial" dramas and MOWs, is hostile towards anyone with creative jam and/or BFA papers. But the real filmmakers aren't going to lug cables, fetch lattes or be accountants anyway. Nor do they need bags of cash, corporate infrastructure, organizational integration, or jury approval. They need cars and cameras-in-hand, and exciting adventures, and a few good ideas. And interested critical environments, like Montreal. And they need you, to come out and watch with opened-up eyes. That's it.

Program One

Saskatchewan. Brian Stockton. 2002. 5 minutes.
"Using home movies, vintage memorabilia and the straight facts about Saskatchewan, the filmmaker creates an eccentric portrait of the first year of his life, and the province that shaped his identity." - ZeD TV

You would make a good lawyer. Jason Britski. 2000. 5 minutes.
"You would make a good lawyer is a film that deals with issues of being employed within our social construct. The nature of employment often seems to conflict with basic desires that cannot be met without such an obligatory arrangement. Within the workplace I found a way to rediscover myself, despite my obligation. In photographs, I found a way of successfully dealing with my "captor". The Tiger cannot escape, and neither can we. It all depends on how you deal with your own particular situation. The title itself is taken from a fortune that I kept receiving from fortune cookies, which seemed to capture the irony of my predicament perfectly." - JB

decisions. Dianne Ouellette. 2002. 2 minutes.
"A claustrophobic examination of constraint and the pressurized atmosphere of imminent resolution." - DO

The Table. Heather Malek. 1999. 11 minutes.
"The meeting place of a kitchen table becomes a reflection of the shifting lives around it - a vessel for the expression of humor, anger, tenderness." - HM

The People in Black. Robin Schlaht. 1992. 9 minutes.
"The People in Black is a lyrical portrait of the Baildon Hutterite Colony near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, using slow-motion cinematography and the Hutterites' own songs and prayers." - RB

Four Corners. Ian Toews. 1998. 6 minutes.
"Without using words or sensational imagery, this film makes a powerful statement in communicating the horror of environmental pollution." - Jury, 30th Tampere International Short Film Festival

Plein Air. Richard Kerr. 1991. 20 minutes.
"This abstract travelogue flies just over the surface of the Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario. Plein Air is an engrossing sonic and visual trip and a continuation of Kerr's fascination with landscape cinema." - Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Approximate Running Time: 58 minutes

Program Two

with terrifying clarity, voyage whose chartings are unfixed. Brett Kashmere. 2002. 3 minutes.
"With terrifying clarity… is a super 8 study for a longer film I'm presently making about my great-grandfather's passage from London, England to Golden Plains, Saskatchewan at the beginning of the 20th century. Using the shadow play of light as a metaphor for human memory this film reframes Saskatchewan's immigrant history through the developing lens of the cinema." - BK

Sand. Percy Fuentes. 2001. 13 minutes.
During one lonely night in an urban environment, different people recall their past. Subjectivity and actuality contradict each other. These fragmented thoughts and ideas flow together and tell stories of isolation, love, and confusion.

The Premonition of Little John. Shane Christian Eason. 2003. 3 minutes.
"Dreaming of becoming a cop, playing the robber or being the cowboy, three boys put their imaginations to work and act out their roles in a public park." - SCE

Nocturne. Michael Crochetiere. 1996. 6 minutes.
"A train passes by, a boy with a sparkler in his hand leads us into the world of night. A dark, haunting portrait of the urban landscape in a nocturnal fog." - MC

Final: Toxic 6. Gerald Saul. 2002. 5 minutes.
"The acceleration of time is an inevitability as we age and we, as society, face its ultimate conclusion. Shot during the transition of a historical University of Regina fine arts building becoming a highly commercial movie sound stage." - GS

arc. Michael Rollo. 2003. 3 minutes.
"An architectural film about accumulating ideas, resolving ideas, and failing ideas. An architectural film that has no idea. An idea for an architectural film." - MR

Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. Troy Rhoades. 2001. 3 minutes.
"Abstract leaf patterns reverberate and jitter across the screen in this abstraction of fused light and nature." - TR

Shadesong. Roy Cross. 1996. 20 minutes.
"Shade: a ghost, a disembodied spirit. Song: a melody for a lyric poem or ballad. A film that explores the longing for physical contact between separated lovers." - RC

Approximate Running Time: 56 minutes