Lifeworldimage is the home of a series of art documentaries entitled A Second Look as well as a other films, including Territories, a Picture This Production and the Box, a Lifeworld Image mini-project for Claire.
A Second Look examines the art of the abstract expressionist painter Selwyn Owen in Not for Sale. This film is followed by a look at the art of drawing master Paul Young The Grain in the Light, and Montreal painter Anne-Laure Djaballah When a City Dreams…. The fourth film in the series, entitled About Face, is about the photographic art of portrait photographer John Reeves.
Two more films are in production for 2019: A Manual for Immigrants about the work of poet Fraser Sutherland and End of the Night Music which looks at the fantastic art of Swiss-Canadian painter Rudolph Stussi.
Lifeworldimage is a Creative Commons – within the larger mediaspace of Project Lifeworld – devoted to the production and representation of visual works across disciplines and media. Drawing from a variety of perspectives and approaches, it seeks to support the artistic vision of lesser-known visual artists by focusing on their works while hearing from them and others about creative processes and practices.
While the documentary form lends itself well to a number of narrative and visual modes of expression, several other approaches are also integral features of the interactive discursive environment that is Project Lifeworld.
Presently, we offer you the trailer and a single chapter from each documentary as initial invitations to meet these artists and their extraordinary work. There is, of course, more to see should you be interested.
A Second Look – Other Stories of Canadian Art– An Overview
As stated elsewhere, the intuition for these documentaries is grounded in the knowledge and appreciation that only a very small portion of the significant art produced in Canada ever comes to the attention of the general public and that a great deal of interesting – challenging and inspiring work does forever go unnoticed until media projects such as this one allow for the shared discoveries of these truly remarkable examples of Canadian art.
Although each artist’s story, work and approach in the series is vastly different from the other, they share a common fate in that they represent projects pursued primarily outside of the mainstream art institutions and systems of exhibition. As outsiders of one type or another, each artist has worked at the margins of the prevailing sites of cultural representation, cultivating instead a deeply personal vision unconstrained by market demands and the vagaries of fashion and popular taste. It is this single-minded pursuit – inscribed in a deeply-held sense of the necessity and relevance of art – that has produced truly remarkable works and opened up – yet again – the vital discussion – through interviews, anecdotes and personal reflections about the nature and status of all cultural production in collective life.
Trailers for Lifeworldimage Productions
Not for sale is the story of Toronto artist Selwyn Owen. The film contains interviews and commentaries by mentors, friends, acolytes and fellow artists whose reflections open up a dialogue with both the artist and his work. But in the end, it is the sheer range, diversity and execution of the paintings themselves which are the focus of the program because and its main character, in the words of the artist himself “it is the work that matters… the title, provenance, signature, all these belong on the back of the canvas…”
The Grain in the Light is a look at the work of Toronto drawing Master Paul Young. In viewing the work, we experience the large nude drawings as they explode off the page in an ecstatic celebration of the human form while the animal drawings, not content to emulate the mainstream pastiches of the genre, offer unique insights not only into the appearance of the animals themselves, but the individual specificities and characteristics of their individual nature. Still, it is perhaps in his nature drawings that the range and depth of Paul’s skills is most accessible as these drawings contain areas of high definition set off against the broader expressions of gesture and calligraphy bound by a deep sense of order and composition.
When a City Dreams is an urban homage to the city of Montréal as seen and told though the art of Anne-Laure Djaballah. More often than not, documentary projects such as this one provide a rear-view look at an artist’s life work – assessing and discussing the accretion over time of vision and influences. When a City Dreams is a story of fate and destiny – a narrative journey of self- discovery experienced through the words and paintings of the painter Anne-Laure Djaballah
About Face look at the works of Toronto portrait photographer John Reeves. Some of the most compelling images produced by John Reeves are the result of two commissions to document the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (in 1982 & 1998) producing portraits of the major Inuit artists and documenting the printmaking enterprises at Cape Dorset over a period of 15 or more years. Although the project began as a political document to provide visual support for government policies regarding aboriginal art in Canada, it became, somewhere between the lens and the darkroom, a most powerful representation of our Northern unconscious inscribed in monochromatic images which continues to haunt our collective imagination at the limit of any conception of time and space.
General Production Credits
Producer/Director – Pierre Ouellet – Camera Operators – Philippe Ouellet – Pierre Ouellet – Karan Dhillon – Video Editing – Pierre Ouellet – Sound Design & Audio Post – Pierre Ouellet and Venture Music – Original Music – Pierre Ouellet & Jim MacDonald – Startup Financing – 676362 Ontario Limited.
Toronto – Ontario
Lifeworldimage documentaries currently in production
The film entitled “A Manual for Immigrants” uses the poems from Frazer Sutherland’s 2006 poetry book by the same name as its point of entry into a multi-faceted reflection on the ideology and practices of multiculturalism within the Canadian cultural environment. From there, the documentary engages in a discussion about the writings and career of this most interesting of Canadian authors, garnering a unique perspective on the métier de Belles Lettres and the spirit that compels one to write, often in face of the most tragic of personal circumstances.
End of the Night Music is a unique documentary about the work of Rudolf Stussi, a Swiss-Canadian painter whose journey is as incredible and diverse as his work.
Lifeworldimage is the home of a series of art documentaries entitled A Second Look as well as a other films, including Territories, a Picture This Production and the Box, a film for (and by) Claire Ouellet.
Two more films are in production for 2019: A Manual for Immigrants about the work of poet Fraser Sutherland and End of the Night Music which looks at the fantastic art of Swiss-Canadian painter Rudolph Stussi.
