The projector and the sewing machine are rhythmic mechanisms. Both film and fabric are cut and stitched. Thread runs through the projector as it does through the machine. The needle punctures the celluloid frame, optical track, and fabric to create industrial sounds. People and places are reintroduced into cloth’s existence; labour is honored and craft is celebrated in song and dance. This screening focuses on the industrial nature of film and fabric, stitching together parts to make something whole.

We are excited to present 16mm experimental films and expanded cinema performances by Jordan Caroompas, Kelly Eagan, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Jennifer Nightingale, Jasmin Risk, Abigail Smith, Mary Stark and Samuel Wasserman.

“film becomes a textile; a quilt composed of photographic material embedded with history” — Sabrina Gschwandtner

This workshop invites participants to create their own celluloid quilt by reusing found film — cutting, inking, dying, scratching, arranging and sewing it into a personal assemblage inspired by quilt or weave patterns. Drawn from the works of Richard Kerr, Sabrina Gschwandtner and Jennifer West, these techniques see film as material, encouraging playful reconstructions of size, color, and narrative. At the end, participants will go home with their very own film quilt to exhibit on a lightbox or a window.

In this workshop, participants will explore shadow, movement, and rhythm through various contact printing techniques, using 16mm film and swatches/samples of fabric. Following a short screening of relevant works, participants will be shown how to play with cameraless compositions, expose and develop 3378 print film, both in and out of traditional darkroom spaces. Resulting images can be in either positive or negative, with opportunities for optical soundtracks created by the materials exposed.

Resulting 16mm workshop footage will screen alongside Thread Tension, a fabric-focused screening presented by XINEMA on Saturday August 23.

The participants are invited to bring their own fabric of various levels of transparency, stretch and weight to experiment with.

Come ring in summer with us at our Solstice Garden Party! FREE for all to attend! We will be weeding and planting our photographic garden, phytogramming, lemonading, hanging, and more. All materials provided!

In this workshop, led by Tetsuya Maruyama, participants will experiment with some of the most archaic photography techniques; pinhole camera and contact printing, with the use of old Japanese matchboxes. Pan-cinema raw material; time and space. From images captured on 16mm film frame by frame, participants will create negative and positive copies with Print Film. This technique allows for the freedom to work directly with the surface of the film with light, in the same way as a painter leaves their gesture on a canvas.

A 35mm photographic film cassette modification is required to load 16mm film, along with making a small camera box with household items such as a matchbox. Thus, one can also print information on the sound area of the film. Participants will be shown some works made with these techniques by artists like Paolo Gioli, Dianna Barrie, Philipp Fleischmann, etc. At the end, participants will present a collective film installation.

Curated by Tetsuya Maruyama.

As a painter applies pigment to a canvas, a filmmaker applies light and matter to a film strip. This program, hand-picked by Tetsuya Maruyama, featured experimental works on 16mm produced at artist-run film labs scattered throughout the vast and diverse geopolitical territories of Brazil. Through the relation of physical sensation to the ecological and the cultural, film-skin is profaned as a tangible material that becomes ephemeral when passed through a projector. This group of works emerge from the personal interests of each artist without expecting anything in return. Filmmaker and guest curator Tetsuya Maruyama joined us in-person for a post-screening Q&A.

Screening: Francisco B. Gusso, Moira Lacowicz, Helder Martinovsky, Tetsuya Maruyama, Maria Mion, João Reynaldo, Duo Strangloscope, Līgia M. Teixeira, and Ж.

This extended program, composed of seven works by international and local filmmakers, offered a moment to sit with the haunting of what has and is yet to come—socio-politically, ecologically, supernaturally—through the droning cycles of light and landscape; what lies beyond, and the many stones along the way.

Geological scales of reverie, memory and capitalist extraction. Islands of liminality, upon which to rest. Suddenly, bending through violent fissures in our current existence. Noise from the underworld is heard close by, palpable to the touch.

This program followed the BC premiere of Eastern Anthems, a collaboration between Jean-Jacques Martinod and Matthew Wolkow, which screened at DOXA 2025 on Sunday, May 11, and included a filmmaker Q&A moderated by XINEMA.

Screening: Ana Edwards, Ryan Ermacora, Jessica Johnson, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Erica Sheu, Bretta C. Walker, and Aidan Whiteley.

Sunset Seduction (2024) stars a liberal philanthropist yearning for his next fling with radical politics. Written as the Palestine solidarity movement escalated in 2024, the work unfolds in essayistic fragments considering ideas of freedom, violence, and the seductive capture of revolutionary ideology. Sunset Seduction is a personal, conceptual, and activist work that claims a film, contract, and discussion as its materials, together aiming to materialize the particular responsibilities of cultural workers in the global north.

This program will feature a screening of the central 45-minute film, followed by an extended audience discussion that will address reflections on prior series discussion and workshop sessions.

This program is a part of SUNSET SEDUCTION: Gatherings Against Institutional Capture, a three-part series consisting of a discussion, workshop, and screening with artist Charles de Agustin. These engagements investigate the tensions between nonprofit, state, and grassroots formations through the lens of cultural institutions in Vancouver, BC and beyond.

Following a review of the history of artist contracts in both administrative and experimental contexts, participants will be encouraged to reflect on the challenges in their own work environments, using writing exercises to consider playful or earnest subversions of bureaucratic tools. This workshop is geared toward artists and arts workers.

This program is a part of SUNSET SEDUCTION: Gatherings Against Institutional Capture, a three-part series consisting of a discussion, workshop, and screening with artist Charles de Agustin. These engagements investigate the tensions between nonprofit, state, and grassroots formations through the lens of cultural institutions in Vancouver, BC and beyond.

As progressive causes become increasingly entwined with and beholden to the benevolence of barely liberal one-percenters, we must sharpen our collective power as workers—whether salariat or precariat, waged or unwaged, in hierarchical or horizontal formations. This event intends to bring together radical voices in the Vancouver art/film community to listen, and respond to direct community experiences to demystify ongoing political and workplace struggles.

This program is a part of SUNSET SEDUCTION: Gatherings Against Institutional Capture, a three-part series consisting of a discussion, workshop, and screening with artist Charles de Agustin. These engagements investigate the tensions between nonprofit, state, and grassroots formations through the lens of cultural institutions in Vancouver, BC and beyond.