Electric Garden (2011)

In art, sleeping figures, especially nudes carry a strong erotic charge. For this video, I’ve filled the screen with close-ups of the feet, torso and face implying that the viewer is like a lover right next to the figure and able to touch her. Her reclining pose evokes sexual abandonment. In painting, for the most part, this genre is the province of male artists, and through this video I seek to create a reversal of this tradition.

As well, as a female artist enacting the reclining nude, I seek to  claim full control over my self-image, as well as to counteract what has been  historically in Western art considered the male hetero-gaze and to question current conceptions surrounding what has become a contentious characteristic of human experience.

 

Electric Garden

HD/ blu-ray / Betacam SP / DVD / MOV / 00h03m00s / colour/ 2011 /  no dialogue

credits:

director/videographer: micheline durocher

camera: josé dupuis

cast: micheline durocher

sound:  micheline durocher

editing: rachel echenberg, yuri berger, micheline durocher, anhtu vu

post production : anhtu vu

format: filmed in mini-dv

2011 screenings

Arizona Underground Film Festival, Tuckson, USA, September 16-24.

MisAlt Series, Pornographers and its discontents, San Francisco, USA, July 28.

Doppelgänger (2011)

Doppelgänger conveys the  theme of the uncanny, the double as shadow and fleeting  residual image.  It pursues culture’s persistent association  of new electronic media with paranormal phenomena, technical obsolescence with nostalgia, anxiety and the erotic.

Doppelgänger

HD/ blu-ray / Betacam SP / DVD / MOV / 00h04m17s / colour/ 2011 /  no dialogue

Credits

Director / videographer: micheline durocher

Camera :  josé dupuis

Editor :             micheline durocher, anhtu vu

Music / Sound :             ancient robot music, micheline durocher

Post-production: anhtu vu

Performer: micheline durocher

Format: filmed in mini-dv, transferred to DVD and HD

Screenings 2011

2012    222 Lodge Extern, The Inevitable : One Night screening, Dordrecht, Netherlands

2012   Gallery 13, Toronto, Canada.

2011   Northside Film Festival, Williamsburg (NYC), USA.

2011   2nd international short film and video festival. Novi Sad, Serbia.

2011   The MisALT Screening Series, Pornography and its discontents, San Francisco, USA.

 

Press

http://www.indiewire.com/article/brooklyns_northside_festival_announces_2011_lineup#

Lapse (2011)

Set to a soundtrack of percussive sounds, this surrealistic video captures the idiosyncratic movements of a swimmer in a restless bubble of water.

HD / blu-ray / Betacam SP / DVD / MOV / 00h01m48s / colour / 2011 /  no dialogue

Credits:

Director / videographer : micheline durocher

Camera : Yuri Berger

Editing : micheline durocher, rachel echenberg, anthu vu

Original music: narf, micheline durocher

Performed by: micheline durocher

Post-production: anhtu vu

Format:  filmed in mini-dv, transferred to DVD

Country :  Canada

PRIZES

2011   Oboro/Laoun,  Super Short Film Prize, Montreal, Canada.

PRESS

http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/experimental-film-the-focus-at-madrid-festival

oboro.net/archive/exhib1112/10_prix_laoun_oboro/info_en.html

SCREENINGS

2012   14th Mecal International Short Film Festival, April 13-29, Barcelona, Spain.
2012   13th Rdeče zore / Red Dawns Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia, March 7th and 10th 2012
2011   The Arizona Underground Film Festival, Tucson, USA.
2011   Laoun vitrine, Montreal, Canada.

 

Lewis James laying down the music

Uncle Lew laying down the vibes in Montreal, Canada at Ancient Robot Music.

http://www.myspace.com/freefornow

End track: “Mandy’s UH” by Uncle Lew.

From the Change of Plan EP (2010), available for download: http://www.archive.org/download/csm013Uncl

 

Every man’s Right (2010) – experimental documentary

The right to roam or Everyman’s Right has survived in perhaps its purest form in Finland, as well as Iceland, Norway and Sweden. “Jokamiehenoikeus” (Finnish) is the general public’s right to access public or privately owned land for recreation, exercise and wild herb and berry harvesting.

This short recent experimental documentary video has been created by Anthony and Micheline Durocher and shot on location in Finland as they follow harvesters picking local delicious edible wild greens and mushrooms in parks and green spaces of urban spaces.

Jokamiehenoikeus

Every man’s Right

2010

00h02min30sec

director, editor, cameraman: Micheline Durocher

music: Ancient Robot Music

post-production: Anhtu Vu

Produced for Strange Ambition Media

Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger / 2009 / ooho4min15sec / bw / no dialogue / Canada / dvd / betacamSp

This recent experimental video is inspired by the autobiography of Goethe, conveying the uncanny feeling of being confronted with your double coming toward you.

… and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me.. I saw my own figure coming toward me, attired in a dress which I had never worn… it was pike-gray, with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to her, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident.  (Truth and Fiction, Goethe)

Credits

Director / videographer: micheline durocher

Camera :  josé dupuis

Editor :     micheline durocher

Original soundtrack :    ancient robot music

Performer: micheline durocher

Format: filmed in min-dv, transferred to DVD and BetacamSp

SCREENINGS

• MUFF, Montréal, Canada, May 14-16, 2009
• Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, Montréal, Canada, 17-27 February, 2010
• Festival 600, Ljubljana, Slovenia, , 26-28 May, 2010

• Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 20-28 August, 2010

• Upcomming screenings
• Spooky Movie International  Film Festival, Washington DC, 21 to 25 October, 2010

Syncope

This self-filmed video shows a female reader moving to the rhythm of the turning pages of a book titled Exercises de français  (French language exercises). The movement of  her body is illogical and nonsensical – it resides in the strange in-between space of wanting to read and being in language.  This video is constructed upon a short loop extracted from a high-8 tape which was then expanded through repetition and experimental editing techniques.

Credits

Director/ videographer : Micheline Durocher
Camera :  micheline durocher
Editing :  micheline durocher, yuri berger, monique moumblow
Sound : micheline durocher
Performed by: micheline durocher
Format : filmed in High 8 transferred to DVD
Year: 2004
Length: 3 min. 30 sec.

Screenings of “Syncope”

2007 LadyFest, Toronto, Canada

2007 Flashflood, Tucson, Arizona, USA.

2006 “Prescription” and “diagnosticians’, Headcheese Sandwich., Forest City Gallery, London, Canada.
2006 SWGC Art Gallery, contemporary film and Video festival, Memorial University, sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Corner Brook, NL, Canada, 2006
2005 “Pixel Dance Video Festival”, Thalassa, Greece
2005 “Bedrooms, Rooftops, and Sidewalks” , a Public Film Screening, Montreal, Canada
2005 ‘Motion, Feminist Film Festival, ( ) ette Collective, Lethbridge, Canada

Internet:

312 on Screen, http://www.312.ca , February and March 2006.

Electric Garden

Electric Garden is constructed upon one continuous pan of the edges and outlines of the female body and elicits the idea of the well established erotic theme in art, the reclining nude. Rendered in rich and vibrant colours,  it transfers the imagery of the undressed observed reclining woman to a visual  representation of woman’s own satisfaction.

Credits
Director / videographer: micheline durocher
Camera :  josé dupuis
Editors :     yuri berger, micheline durocher, rachel echenberg
Music / Sound :    micheline durocher, narf

Performer:  micheline durocher

Format: filmed in min-dv, transferred to DVD and BetacamSP

Length : 3 min 30 sec.                       2009

Screenings :

Rendez-vous du cinema québécois, 2009

Montreal Underground Film Festival

This is not synchronised swimming.

Set to a soundtrack of percussive sounds, “This is not synchronised swimming” captures the movements of a swimmer out of water. Using a split-screen arrangement, humour and irony, the video conveys the disruptive and unruly potential of the performative body.

Credits:

Director and choreography: micheline durocher
Camera : yuri berger
Editing : micheline durocher, rachel echenberg
Sound : narf, micheline durocher
Performed by:  micheline durocher

Format:  filmed in mini-dv, transferred to DVD
Country :  Canada        MMVI

Length : 1min. 13 sec.

Screenings 2007

Spark Video Syracuse, Syracuse, NY. USA
Jerkin Paradise, Forest City Gallery, Spark video Canada, London, Canada
LadyFest, Toronto, Canada
Flash Flood, International Video Art Festival, Tucson, Arizona
Gallery Lambton, a Contemporary Video Art Screening, Sarnia, Canada
Eye Level Gallery,  “Rip Current” curated by Drifter Video, Halifax, Canada

Publications
Included as a dvd in Matrix magazine, Fall 2007, Montreal, Canada

Matchstick

Constructed around a soundtrack of burning matches, Matchstick is a poetic meditation on memory, desire, and Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Matchstick Girl. The video finds visual pleasure in the play of light and darkness, blurring and fragmenting images while it develops its central theme: memory, the impossibility of truly remembering and the construction of desire through video editing techniques.

Credits:
Director / videographer : micheline durocher
Camera : Jose Dupuis
Editing : micheline durocher, rachel echenberg
Sound : narf, micheline durocher
Performed by: micheline durocher

Format: filmed in mini-dv, transferred to DVD
Country : Canada

Length : 3 min. 27 sec. MMVI

Screenings 2007
M.U.F.F. , Montreal, Canada
LadyFest, Toronto, Canada
Antimatter, Victoria, Canada