Bonnie's Indescribable Predicament
Co-written/directed with Eric Hill, 7 minutes, 16mm, 2008
I'm very happy with this film, primarily due to the energy and flurry of creativity we poured into it and the audience it found. In the middle of the Professor Delusia and the Modern projects in the summer of 2008, Eric Hill negotiated a space in the after party of the Regina Folk Festival to show a film. We had ten days until screening time and we wanted to show something with a film projector with live piano accompaniment. We decided that we would collaborate under the pseudonym "The Super Melies Brothers" to create a work inspired by Guy Maddin with rough but interesting aesthetic qualities and a plot as twisted as we could make it. Within two days we had the entire film storyboarded and ready to go. We shot in one day in the green walled classroom at the University of Regina. Much of our cast fell through but we found new people on short notice. No one really knew our story but us. It is about a love triangle, mutants, ghosts, mad cows, madder scientists, and the anger of a postal delivery man. I edited and compiled the images and it was kinescoped to 16mm (in what Eric called "PIXEL ENHANCED KINESCOPOVISION!" within six days of the conception of the idea. Eric composed some music and practiced it a number of times. The screening space was at the Legion Hall on Cornwall Street in Regina. The 16mm projector was on top of an upright piano, pointing at a standing screen ten feet away. The space sat only about 15 but there were often over 20 jammed in. The film screened about fifty times over the three nights (between midnight and 3 am). Eric soon discovered that his amateur fingers couldn't keep up with the demand and began to bleed by the end of night one. Other musicians (of which the hall was full) took on the role, playing variations of Eric's composition.
The cast includes Tanya Dahms, Carle Steel, Rob Bos, Gerald Saul, and Eric Hill, most playing more than one role.