FLicKeR | |
---|---|
Directed by | Nik Sheehan |
Written by | Nik Sheehan |
Based on | Chapel of Extreme Experience by John G. Geiger |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Harald Bachmann |
Edited by |
|
Music by | Edmund Eagan |
Release date |
|
Running time | 75 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Languages | English French |
FLicKeR is a Canadian documentary film written and directed by Nik Sheehan, produced by Maureen Judge and Silva Basmajian (NFB). The film is based on the book Chapel of Extreme Experience [1] by John G. Geiger about the work of artist Brion Gysin and his Dreamachine.
Gysin's Dreamachine used a 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Its users would sit in front of it, close their eyes, and experience visions as a result of the flashes of light. Gysin believed that by offering the world a drugless high the invention could revolutionize human consciousness. [1]
The documentary features interviews with many prominent figures from the beat movement who had experimented with Gysin's invention and discuss his life and ideas in the film. Notable figures include Marianne Faithfull, DJ Spooky, The Stooges, Iggy Pop, Lee Ranaldo, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno, Floria Sigismondi, and Kenneth Anger. [2]
The film premiered in Toronto in 2008 at the international documentary film festival Hot Docs and received the festival's award for the best Best Canadian Feature Documentary . [3] It then went on to win in the Best Film on International Art category at the 2009 Era New Horizons Film Festival in Poland, [4] and was also nominated for a 2009 Gemini Award in the category of Best Performing Arts Program or Series or Arts Documentary Program or Series, and best original score by composer Edmund Eagan. [5] Nik Sheehan was also nominated for a Canadian screenwriting award by the Writers Guild of Canada. [6]
Brion Gysin was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices.
Ted Remerowski, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, was born in Poland in 1948. After a rather circuitous passage through the Middle East and Europe, his family arrived in Canada in 1951. Growing up in Montreal, he graduated from McGill University's School of Architecture.
The Dreamachine is a stroboscopic flickering light art device that produces eidetic visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs' "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the Dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.
Maureen Judge is a Canadian Screen Awards (CSA) winning [ filmmaker and television producer. Much of her work is documentary and explores themes of love, betrayal and acceptance in the context of the modern family, with the most recent films focusing on the dreams and challenges of contemporary youth.
Moze Mossanen is a Canadian independent writer, director and producer who has created a body of critically acclaimed film and TV work blending drama, music, performance and documentary. Most recently, he wrote and directed the documentary feature, You Are Here: A Come From Away Story. His other works include Year of the Lion, a dance film adaptation of the novel, Dangerous Liaisons, and Nureyev, a docu-drama about the life of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square is a 1998 short animated documentary directed by Shui-Bo Wang and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada. It is an autobiography about the director's life, career and ultimate disillusionment with the Chinese Communist Party. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, but lost to The Personals.
Daniel Cross a Canadian documentary filmmaker, producer and activist whose films deal with social justice.
Nik Sheehan is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, who established an international reputation with No Sad Songs (1985), the first major documentary on AIDS. The film cited by world-renowned specialist Dr. Balfour Mount as "the best film on the planet this year".
John Grigsby Geiger is an American-born Canadian author. He is best known for his book The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible, which popularized the concept of the "third man", an incorporeal being that aids people under extreme duress. The book is the basis for National Geographic Channel's Explorer: The Angel Effect, in which Geiger appears. A book of the same name was published in 2013.
Kensington Communications is a Toronto-based production company that specializes in documentary films and documentary/factual television series. Founded in 1980 by president Robert Lang, Kensington Communications Inc. has produced over 250 productions from documentary series and films to performing arts and children's specials. Since 1998, Kensington has also been involved in multi-platform interactive projects for the web and mobile devices.
Nick Hector is a Canadian film producer and editor, and professor of film production at the University of Windsor.
Manfred Becker is a German-Canadian documentary independent filmmaker and film editor. His work often explores personal stories behind current or historical issues.
Steven Silver is a South African / Canadian media entrepreneur, producer, and director. Together with media industry veteran Peter Sussman, Silver co-founded and was the CEO of Kew Media Group Inc., a publicly listed content company that produced and distributed multi-genre content worldwide.
Thomas Selim Wallner is a German/Canadian filmmaker.
Ric Esther Bienstock is a Canadian documentary filmmaker best known for her investigative documentaries. She was born in Montréal, Quebec and studied at Vanier College and McGill University. She has produced and directed an eclectic array of films from investigative social issue documentaries like Sex Slaves, an investigation into the trafficking of women from former Soviet Bloc Countries into the global sex trade and Ebola: Inside an Outbreak which took viewers to ground zero of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire - to lighter fare such as Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour.
John Kastner was a four-time Emmy Award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker whose later work focused on the Canadian criminal justice system. His films included the documentaries Out of Mind, Out of Sight (2014), a film about patients at the Brockville Mental Health Centre, named best Canadian feature documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; NCR: Not Criminally Responsible (2013), exploring the personal impact of the mental disorder defence in Canada; Life with Murder (2010), The Lifer and the Lady and Parole Dance, and the 1986 made-for-television drama Turning to Stone, set in the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario.
Damon Vignale is a Canadian writer, director, and producer working in film and television. He has directed the films Little Brother of War and The Entrance. He released the web series The Vetala in 2009, drawn from the Baital Pachisi, a collection of Sanskrit tales and legends, which received a 2010 Gemini Award. Vignale’s debut documentary film The Exhibition world premiered in the Next Program of the 2013 Hot Docs International Film Festival. The film won the 2014 International Emmy Award for Arts Programming. Vignale's television credits as a writer-producer include ABC/CTV's homicide series Motive, Bravo's police drama 19-2, and the ITV/BritBox series The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco.
Larry Weinstein is a Canadian film director of theatrical and television documentaries, performance films, and dramas. The majority of his films centre on musical subjects and the depiction of the creative process, while his other subjects range from the horrors of war to the pleasures of football.
Laura Taler is a Romanian-born Canadian artist. Beginning her career as a contemporary dance choreographer, she now works in a range of media, including performance, film, sound, sculpture, and installations. Taler's films The Village Trilogy and Heartland are heralded by Dance International Magazine as marking the beginning of the dancefilm boom in Canada.
Matt Gallagher is a Canadian film director, producer and cinematographer from Windsor, Ontario.