The Spiral Collective is pleased to announce the FREE screening program
• Moment & Myth in the Philosophy of Film •
by Florida-based filmmaker Trevor Mowchun who will attend in person
December 8, 2023, 7PM EDT
School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University, IMA 307, 122 Bond St. M5B 1E9
• • •
Program
▶︎ NORTHSTARLING (Daniel Gerson & Trevor Mowchun, 2019, 16mm/digital, black and white, 13 min) — A woman’s stream of consciousness quickens during the coldest time of year. The deep-freeze of winter is summertime for time itself.
▶︎ DRINK SOME DARKNESS (Trevor Mowchun, 2020, digital, colour, 10 min) — A sentient patch of projector-light leads the viewer through a liminal space fit with three doors, each its own microcosm of feeling, its own film within the film. Inspired by a poem of haunting revelation from the great Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer.
▶︎ UNMASTERED (Trevor Mowchun & Shaun Gamboa, 2023, digital, colour, 17 min) — Three friends hold a formal discussion on a complex film character whose fractured and libidinal psyche inspires a journey into the unconscious realm of the film in which he appears. An “unmastering” of the cinematic masterpiece and the intellectual discourses that become its slave.
▶︎ FIBONACCI PRIVACY FENCE (Trevor Mowchun, 2023, digital, color, 15 min) — When I was in high school, no matter how hard I tried I was always terrible at math. I could never grasp the fundamentals well enough to perceive any kind of creative opening or spark in the severity of the work. One step after another, each more obscure to me than the last. I suppose I was not inclined to solve abstract problems that I couldn’t clearly envision or relate to. Perhaps my teachers were to blame. Anyways, for all that time and energy spent on a system or language (which is it?) I will likely never understand, I hereby exact my poetic revenge!
▶︎ DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY (Trevor Mowchun, digital, in progress) — When the class ends the students peacefully file out. The tired teacher is the last to leave. He passes through empty hallways with no sign of the students he tried to teach, nor the few who managed to teach him something. On the way to the parking lot, he crosses paths with other students from other classrooms. Were all these classes as predictable as this route? A film exploring the physical movements, rhythms, and possible aftershocks of a life of the mind we call the university.
• • •
Trevor Mowchun is Assistant Professor and Director of Film and Media Studies at University of Florida. He is the author of Metaphysics and the Moving Image: “Paradise Exposed” (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Some of his film writing can be described as experimental, making use of diaries, diagrams, aphorisms, and marginalia. This is consistent with his work as an experimental filmmaker in films such as World to Come (2015) and Drink Some Darkness (2020).
