unfinished passages
Brett Kashmere / 2005 / Super 8 and 16mm to digital video / 17 minutes / b&w / sound
Short Synopsis
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.
“History breaks down into images, not into stories.” -- Walter Benjamin, Passagen-Werk
Long Synopsis
This five-part film cycle emphasizes instants, rather than developing situations. Designed using indeterminate loop forms, and organized around themes of dislocation, transition, settlement, modernity and transportation, unfinished passages traces my great-grandfather’s journey from London, England to Golden Plains, Saskatchewan at the turn of the 20th century. Using the shadow play of light and darkness as a metaphor for human memory unfinished passages reframes his forced immigration/orphan experience through the developing lens of the cinema. In bringing to light this aspect of my family history I draw upon the language of early cinema, beginning with the straightforward visual simplicity of Lumière demonstration pieces such as Boat Leaving the Harbour (1896) and The Arrival of a Train at the Station (1895), and Birt Acre’s Rough Sea at Dover (1895). The second part, inspired by Georges Méliès, follows the pattern of a dream and, as in a dream its real meaning is displaced and dispersed through associative connections. Part three forms a transitional pivot, seizing on the romanticized image of a moving train as an emblem for cinematic and technological progress. In part four the film proceeds to a more constructive, layered assembly based on the theory and practice of Dziga Vertov. Part five draws on the individual self-expression and open-ended conclusion of Francois Truffaut’s 400 Blows (1959). The reconstruction of my great-grandfather’s passage from Europe to Canada is, at the same time, expressed as a coterminous movement through film history.
Chapters
with terrifying clarity, voyage whose chartings are unfixed (2002, Super 8 to 16mm, 3 minutes)
dreamed on a morning, starved for immediate night (2003, Super 8, 3 minutes)
into motion, with hesitancies allowed (2000, Super 8 to 16mm, 3 minutes)
in fused with apparent realities, in different kinds of solitude (2005, 16mm, 3 minutes)
affixed in immortality, in which our names do not appear (2004, 16mm, 3 minutes)
Selected Screenings
London Film Festival / London, England
Antimatter Underground Film Festival / Victoria, BC
Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center / Buffalo, New York
WNDX Festival of Film and Video Art / Winnipeg, Manitoba
British Film Institute / London
Cinema Project / Portland, Orgeon
Xalapa Animation and Experimental Film Festival / Xalapa, Mexico
Supplementary Materials
Artist Statement
Script for unfinished passages
Film as Invention of/from Memory: Documents and Notation for unfinished passages [PDF]
View excerpt