ONE-HUNDRED YARD UNIVERSE
Documentary feature, in production
One-Hundred Yard Universe examines American football through the lens of a single family's multi-generational experience with this complex sport in order to understand the game's emergence as an omnipresent feature in American life and culture. It reveals how larger systems of structural inequality, patriarchal masculinity, and identity are at play in shaping America’s most popular pastime.
A film by Brett Kashmere & Solomon Turner
Production: Hello Benjamin Films
FORMATIONS
"The exemplary spectator has his occasional lusts, but not for warfare, hardly at all for that. No, it's details he needs – impressions, colors, statistics, patterns, mysteries, numbers, idioms, symbols. Football, more than other sports, fulfills this need. It is the one sport guided by language, by the word signal, the snap number, the color code, the play name..." (Don DeLillo, END ZONE)
HD video
2016, 5 minutes, color, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
CROSSROADS festival at SFMOMA, San Francisco
GHOSTS OF EMPIRE
Ghost-poem and/or draft sketch for football horror film. Source footage: 1967 NFL Films “ur-text,” They Call It Pro Football. Initiated at the Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario, summer 2015.
Production Format: 16mm
HD video
2016, 4 minutes, b&w, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland
Antimatter, Victoria, BC
Roxie Mixtape #4, Roxie Theater, San Francisco
CLEANING THE GLASS
A desktop postscript to From Deep, reflecting on the past half-decade of sports' convergence with politics and race in American culture.
HD video
2016, 11 minutes, color, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Kassel Dokfest, Kassel, Germany
ICDOCS: Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival
Some Poetic and Political Currents, Los Angeles Filmforum
Milwaukee Underground Film Festival
VISIONS, Montreal
Immediacy [online media journal]
FROM DEEP
From Deep "looks at basketball and its profound role in American life – as an everyday street game played by millions around the country; a force in fashion, music, and mass media; and a platform for broader issues of race and class. Drawing his imagery from neighborhood pick-up games, contemporary films, music videos, and spectacular sports footage, Kashmere charts a history of the game over the last century, including its rapid cultural rise in the 1980s, with the global branding of Michael Jordan; basketball's growing connection with hip hop culture; and its multiplying fan base, which laid the groundwork for the sport's significance today."
– Amy Beste, Conversations at the Edge
“Part sociological treatise, part mix tape, Canadian director Brett Kashmere’s ambitious documentary, From Deep, delivers a high-energy history of the three-decade love affair between basketball and rap.”
– The Globe and Mail
“An indefinable, experimental celebration of basketball and hip hop.”
– Jason Concepcion, Grantland
HD video
2013-14, 88 minutes, color, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Images Festival (Closing Night Film), Toronto, ON
Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI
Conversations at the Edge, Chicago, IL
Milano Film Festival, Milan, Italy
UnionDocs Center for Documentary Arts, Brooklyn, NY
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Cinematheque Quebecoise, Montreal, QC
Additional info, stills, clips, press kit + more at: www.fromdeep.net
ANYTHING BUT US IS WHO WE ARE
Anything But Us Is Who We Are "consists of a burned LeBron James Cavaliers jersey and a TV screen displaying the video game NBA 2K10. The game is locked in perpetual practice mode, with James shuffling in place... awaiting commands from a game controller. Kashmere addresses the immersive environments that allow and encourage fans to feel that players are surrogates of themselves, while also addressing the speed with which virtual representations of players become outdated as they relocate to new teams based primarily on monetary and personal criteria, rather than loyalty to a given city or fan base." (Allison Grant)
Burned basketball jersey, video game console, live video game feed
2012
EXHIBITIONS
Spectator Sports, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL
Game Changer, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO
SPORTSNATION, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA
Cross-Listed, Baron Gallery at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
Still from Valery's Ankle (Brett Kashmere, 2006)
VALERY'S ANKLE
Valery’s Ankle explodes the spectacle of hockey violence and its representation in North American media. Taking Bobby Clarke's breaking of rival Russian star Valery Kharlamov's ankle during the 1972 Summit Series as its departure point and site of research, the film uncovers a disturbing history of unforetold and abject Canadian behaviour.
"… using the avant-garde apparatus to shift the artistic mythology from Paul Henderson's overdone orificial penetration to this moment of violence and shame may well give momentum (and integrity) to the discourses of sports, masculinity, and nationalism in Canadian cinemas." (Thomas Waugh, The Romance of Transgression in Canada)
Digital video
2006, 33 minutes, color, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS AND EXHIBITIONS
Spectator Sports, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL
Kassel Documentary Festival, Kassel, Germany
The Images Festival, Toronto, ON
Made in Video: International Video Art Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
Chicago Underground Film Festival
Arena: The Art of Hockey, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax
PDX Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Portland, OR
The Sports Show, Gallery 400 at University of Chicago-Illinois
Other Cinema, San Francisco, CA
Still from Frames and Leaves (Brett Kashmere, 2006)
FRAMES AND LEAVES
35mm motion picture film bulk loaded into still cartridges and photographed through a 35mm SLR camera. The result is a pixelated effect reminiscent of Robert Breer’s single-frame technique. Also a fall "tour film," spanning the Northeast, the Canadian prairies, Central New York, and points between, and a "leave-ing," cross-border exchange of place (and pace), feeling fugitive and elliptical.
Commissioned by Niagara Custom Lab, Toronto.
35mm film
2006, 3 minutes, color, silent
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Cinecycle, Toronto, ON
Anthology Film Archives, New York City
WNDX Festival of Film and Video Art, Winnipeg, MB
Still from unfinished passages (Brett Kashmere, 2005)
UNFINISHED PASSAGES
Archival images and a contraflow of texts trace the migration of the artist’s great-grandfather from England to the Canadian prairies. Using the shadow play of light and darkness as a metaphor for human memory, unfinished passages reframes this forced immigration/orphan experience through the developing lens of the cinema.
Production formats: Super 8 and 16mm
Digital video
2005, 17 minutes, b&w, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
London Film Festival, London, England
Antimatter Underground Film Festival, Victoria, BC
Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY
WNDX Festival of Film and Video Art, Winnipeg, MB
Cinema Project, Portland, OR
British FIlm Institute, London, England
Xalapa Animation and Experimental Film Festival, Xalapa, Mexico
Still from When Canadians Attack (Brett Kashmere, 2004)
WHEN CANADIANS ATTACK
"The gloves are off in this experimental documentary exploring the paradoxical relationship between hockey violence, Canadian identity, and the theories of Roland Barthes." (Canadian Film Centre)
Digital video
2004, 4 minutes, color, sound
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Canadian Film Center's Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto, ON
Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY
Calgary International Film Festival, Calgary, AB
Cinema Project, Portland, OR
Eyebeam, New York City
Documentary Reframed: Process, Politics and Aesthetics, PAVED Arts, Saskatoon, SK