Double Negative Collective presents:
A Shroud to Hold the Light: films by John Price
Saturday February, 16th 2013, 21h
Cinémathèque québécoise, Claude-Jutra Theatre
335, De Maisonneuve Blvd East, Montréal, Québec, H2X 1K1
Filmmaker In Person
In a career spanning over two decades, Toronto-based filmmaker John Price has created an impressive body of work in 16mm and 35mm. Price’s remarkably prolific creative output places him among the finest voices working today in the tradition of diaristic filmmaking.
An avid chronicler of the quotidian, Price documents the intimate details of his personal life. His careful observation captures precious moments of domestic events – the birth of his child (naissance #1), family trips and Thanksgiving celebrations (Party #4, Camp #2), the growth of his children (domashnyee kino / home movie). The episodic fragments he collects often form a series of thematically linked vignettes (Sea Series #5, #7, #8 and #11), and one of the pleasures his films offer derives from viewing them in ensemble rather than in isolation.
His films, however, extend far beyond the simple memorialization of the everyday; they also foreground his engagement in aesthetic experimentation with light, colour, grains and textures, functioning as the records of the filmmaker’s meditation on the medium he chooses to work with. His filmmaking grew out of his early interest in traditional darkroom photography. The tactile experience of working with physical material constitutes the essential part of his craft. Experimenting with unconventional processing techniques that produce unpredictable photochemical reactions on the fragile emulsion, Price creates images that have unique tonal and textural qualities, imbued with timeless beauty and quiet lyricism.
