FILM & VIDEO
Various Work by Gerda Johanna Cammaer
NATURE AND ECOLOGY
In these projects Cammaer explores how environmental concerns can be expressed in an experiential engagement with the audience by combining imaginative storytelling, sound composition, experimental film techniques and mobile cinema.
Ecotones (2026)
The aim of Ecotones is to explore the relationship between ecology and mobile filmmaking within an eco-critical perspective. An ecotone is a transition area between two biomes or habitats, a place where two ecological communities intersect and integrate. It was entirely filmed on the Eastern-Gap Pier on Toronto Island, as an example of nature reclaiming an industrial requiem. While there is a strong emphasis and focus on nature and landscape in Ecotones, the project is based on the holistic concept that ecology, by its very definition, is unrestricted; it is impossible to say where nature stops and culture begins, or vice versa.
Sea-Changes (2021)
Sea-Changes is an avant-eco doc that takes the viewer on a journey in and out of the water, encountering both comforting and scary moments. The viewer is invited to reflect on what water and being in water represents, its pleasures and dangers, but also the immeasurable damage humans inflict on the oceans of the world and the many creatures that inhabit them. The images used in the film are a combination of original smartphone images of water bodies and water activities, diving footage filmed on GoPro, archival footage and anonymous home movies about water and swimming, all edited to a sound-collage of fiction and non-fiction film excerpts, mixed with newly recorded sounds. Sea-Changes thus acts as a fantastical aquatic environment, a timeless space of anti-civilization.
Stroll and Stumble (to the end of things) (2018)
Short experimental video filmed on Waiheke Island (New Zealand) inspired by a line by Agatha Christie that suggests what it feels like to be on an Island. The video is a poetic rendering of the double experience I had during a walk in a forest while filming it on my iPad. At the end of my walk, I had the impression to have arrived at the end of things, especially after very clumsily climbing a fence and landing into a completely different landscape at the other end and seeing a clear-cut horizon.
Sea-Tossed World 1 & 2
These two digital video pieces explore ways to represent the experience of living in a “Sea-Tossed World”, a time-space environment where all is in constant movement, where past and future are in continuity with each other in a moving-through-the-present, all performed by a tiny red seaweed. Unfolding is about accepting that all is in transition and that just going with the flow leads to a surprising (and colorful) ending and a new departure. In Crystalization one single continuous sea-tossed shot is layered with itself to form a complex, multi-layered time-space environment for a contemplative journey about whether it is better to blend in, break loose, or fade away.
TIME AND MOVEMENT
A consistent theme in Cammaer’s work has been the experience of time and its passage. By extension, she is concerned with the linear and non-linear possibilities of moving image media. These films, though experimental in form, are, content-wise, all grounded in reality – they are essentially explorations of the poetic potential of film to document and convey time and movement.
Night Sail (2019)
Short poetic video shot on iPhone during a night sail with full moon. The video is inspired by a text of Eduardo Hughes Galeano about sailors and memory. Video made for the 4th Edition of the Moving-Image-Arts international Short Film Festival.
https://vimeo.com/350789239
Glissando (2017)
A short ride on Welli's cable car is extended in space and compressed in time by combining the ride up and down into one. The experience of this piece meant to be similar to a "lento pensivo" in music. The music was composed by Alison Melville, and performed by the Polaris Ensemble.
InTransit@NeedHelp? (2014)
Short experiential video shot on iPad how the experience of being in transit when travelling affects our perception of time and space. Sound composed by Dafydd Hughes.
Hydromancy (1998)
This dance film is a search for the “oceanic feeling” or the experience of being one with the entire universe, by contemplating the movement of water. Once found, it becomes an ecstatic water dance. Winner of the Chair’s Award (Concordia University, 1998) and Runner-up Best Experimental / Animation at the Rhode Island International Film Festival (Providence, U.S.A), 1998.
Freezing Time (1997)
Inspired by the idea that it is impossible to stop time, this film tries to do just that, by showing that it is just as possible or impossible as making ice glow. Winner of the Super Suite Award (Concordia University, 1997).
CULTURE, TRAVEL & IMMIGRATION
These works highlight personal encounters, observations, and experiences when traveling. As such, the question of objectivity versus subjectivity is not at stake here, nor do Cammaer’s own films claim universality. For the maker, specifically when documenting travel experiences, the challenge lies in finding creative ways to explore different geographies and intercultural experiences, and to transport the audience (in)to a different world.
The Shoe Project (2019-2023)
The Shoe Project was founded in 2010 by Canadian writer Katherine Govier. The Shoe project aims to generate a meaningful dialogue and to foster cross-cultural interactions through forms of community-engaged art. Initially all the women wrote stories of their arrival in an adaptation to Canada through a pair of shoes under the guidance of experienced writers. Shoes are a good icebreaker and a great metaphor for the transformation that takes place in migration. Cammaer’s contribution was to teach and guide some of these women to create short films based on their shoe stories using the advantages of smartphone filmmaking – a creative process meant to strengthen these women immigrants and refugees by sharing their individual shoe stories with their peers and the rest of the world. The final fourteen short films prove the strengths of mobile filmmaking as a facilitator for diverse storytelling, an enabler for story sharing, and as a cultural mediator. The mobile stories created in the process are different from the mainstream, because they are first-person stories, and first-generation stories, by first-generation filmmakers.
There were two workshops and the respective works are edited
into two videos:
The Shoe Project Shorts - Part 1 (2021, 47 mins., 5 short films, with introduction by the makers): https://vimeo.com/649616957
The Shoe Project Shorts - Part 2 (2023, 55 mins., 9 short films): https://vimeo.com/821306431
Viewfinders (in Collaboration with Max Schleser) (2017)
Viewfinders is an international collaborative creative arts research project that connects travel experiences with mobile creativity. The mobility and functionality of devices like smartphones means that audience engagement with content no longer needs to be a passive viewing experience, but can involve interaction, participation and even location aware and/or responsive content. Viewfinders is an online project that incorporates all these elements to create a navigable augmented landscape composed of places visited, generated by mobile users in the form of brief traveling shots. It aims to recreate and explore traveling, contribute to the study of mobile cinema, compare various forms of moving image media (with a focus on interactive and AR experiences), investigate the possibilities of collaborative and practice-based research, and of working with peer generated content. The project is the brain child of Dr. Max Schleser (Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia) and Dr. Gerda Cammaer (Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada) in collaboration with Phillip Ruberry, who created the AR App and designed the project.
For more information see various publications listed below or our Viewfinders video: https://vimeo.com/238341501
Mobilarte (2014)
This video is based on a TukTuk ride through the city of Maputo (Mozambique) filmed on an iPad. The piece explores the particular qualities of iPad moving images (ghost frames, pixilation), as well as various ways to represent quick impressions and fleeting memories of life in Maputo. The sound was constructed by creating four different musical tones of short TukTuk sounds, which were each attributed to one of the national colors of Mozambique that were gleaned from the images: yellow, green, red and black. Sound composed in collaboration with Dafydd Hughes. https://vimeo.com/90022219
1000 Feet (2000)
A walk through the city of Maputo becomes a poetic visual essay. Inspired by two Mozambican poems, the central themes are shoes, time, space, history, humanity, reading the asphalt and the intrusive effect of a camera.
FILM HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY
New technologies often force us to rethink our paradigms. When older film technology becomes outmoded, we have a chance to grasp the inner complexities of the medium, to look back and see it for real (reel), afresh. Therefore Cammaer particularly loves working with found footage from various orphan films because this kind of footage can be interpreted freely by the filmmaker, especially as part of a critical or satirical comment on culture and society.
Skindrums and Tattoos (2023)
Made with a damaged and purposefully scratched screening copy of Belles of the South Seas (Castle Films, 1944), Skindrums and Tattoos is a parody on the white-centric ethnographic films of that era.
Orbits (2019)
Role reversing found-footage and found-text film about lunches, lust and maybe love... Film made for the 100 Words Film Festival.
https://vimeo.com/351810251
Stargate (2010)
Close-up still images of recycling bins full of 16mm film are subjected to digital effects to create a psychedelic transgression through an analogue universe of ‘dead’ film into the digital world, mimicking the main scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey, part four: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.
https://vimeo.com/24020247
The B-Film Keeper (2009)
A 1940’s damaged instructional film is reworked to demonstrate both good bee-keeping and good film keeping practices, while alluding to the nearing extinction of 16mm film and honeybees today.
Stardust (2009)
This film celebrates the dust and scratches of analogue film, and its magic powers for time and space travel. It is an imaginary plea to preserve our dying celluloid past and to fight the complete takeover by digital technologies. Made in collaboration with sound artist Gerstyn Hayward (Randolph Jordan). Honorable Mention International Film Competition @ Videoex International Film and Video Competition, Zurich (2010).
Struggling in Paradise (2004)
A found-footage film that explores how amidst information overload and mediated emotions, “paradise” as a state of complete happiness, remains a fleeting promise, a state of mind impossible to achieve. When asked, even Hitchcock struggles to define what happiness is. Winner Most Innovative Film Award @ Fellowship of the Reel, Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative (AFCOOP): Halifax (2004).
OTHER VIDEOS
While analogue or digital video other than mobile cinema is not my preferred medium, I made some works using video, varying from an old-fashioned analogue video on ¾ inch and the first digital video cameras, to using a DSLR camera, including a first formal experiment to derive sound directly from the image with the help of coding.
FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS (selection)
Toronto Independent Film Festival (TIFF) (Toronto, Canada), 2022: Sea-Changes.
Women’s Voices Now (Los Angeles, USA), 2022: The Shoe Project (Part 1).
MINA (Ningbo, China), January 2020: Night Sail
VUCAVU, Canadian Film and Video online, 2018: 1000 Feet.
https://vucavu.com/en/canadian-filmmakers-distribution-centre/2000/1000-feet.
Docuverse (Melbourne, Australia), 2017: Viewfinders.
MINA (Melbourne, Australia), 2016: Ultramarine.
MINA (Auckland, New Zealand), 2015: InTransit@NeedHelp?
MINA (Wellington, New Zealand), 2014: Mobilarte (part 3).
Docula (Halifax, NS), 2011: The B-Film Keeper.
Faucet Media Arts Center (Sackville, NB), 2010: Stardust.
Edinburgh International Film Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2010: Stardust.
Videoex International Experimental Film and Video Festival (Zurich, Switzerland), 2010: Honorable Mention International Competition - Stardust.
Go Short International Short Film Festival (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), 2010: Stardust.
Stem Cell: Edmonton Media Arts Festival (Edmonton, Alberta), 2010: Stardust.
Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, BC), 2010: Stardust.
TUFF, Toronto Urban Film Festival (Toronto, Ontario), 2007: Men with Brooms.
Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, British Columbia), 2007: Double Shot.
Curtas Villa do Conde (Conde, Portugal), 2007: Double Shot.
Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, British Columbia), 2004: Struggling in Paradise.
Leuven International Short Film Festival (Leuven, Belgium), 2004: Struggling in Paradise.
Fellowship of the Reel (Halifax, 2002): winner “most innovative film” - Struggling in Paradise.
Rhode Island International Film Festival (Providence, 2002): Neuma
Festival International de Figuera da Foz (Portugal, 2001): 1000 Feet
Reel World Film Festival (Toronto, 2001): 1000 Feet
Festival of New Dance (St. Johns NFL, 2001): Hydromancy
Ann Arbor International Film Festival (Michigan, 2001): 1000 Feet
Festival International du Nouveau Cinéma, Nouveau Media (Montreal, 2000): 1000 Feet
Festival International de Figuera da Foz (Portugal, 1999): Hydromancy
Les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québecois (Montreal, 1999): Hydromancy
Rhode Island International Film Festival (Providence, 1998): Runner-Up Best Experimental Film - Hydromancy.
Festival International du Nouveau Cinéma, Nouveau Media (Montreal, 1998): Hydromancy
EXHIBITIONS and SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Special Screening - Thrills and Spills of Found Footage Filmmaking at Tabakalera (International Center for Contemporary Culture) (San Sebastian, Spain), April 28, 2023: Skindrums and Tattoos (new edit).
Special Screening - Online Screening January 14, 2023: The Shoe Project Part 2.
Special Screening - Cine-Oculta (Buenos Aires, Brazil), 2022: The B-Film Keeper.
Special Screening - Pleasure Dome & Inter Access Gallery (Toronto, ON), 2021: The B-Film Keeper.
Special Screening - VUCAVU, Canadian Film and Video online , 2018: 1000 Feet.
https://www.vucavu.com/en/canadian-filmmakers-distribution-centre/2000/1000-feet/
Group Exhibition - Invisible Geographies @ FLEFF-Finger Lake Environmental Film Festival (Ithaca, NY, USA), 2018: Viewfinders.
https://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/invisible_geographies/viewfinders/
Group Exhibition - Mobile Utopia (Lancaster University, UK), 2-5 November, 2017: Viewfinders
https://www.viewfinders.gallery/blog/viewfinders-mobile-utopia/
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cemore/mobile-utopia-exhibition/
Screening - International Women’s Day. Image Factory (IMA323), School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, March 7-17, 2017: Undressing Sexism.
Group Screening - The Distance Between: Short Films on the idea of Home and Away. Life performance by Ensemble Polaris accompanying short films. (Toronto, Innis College Theatre), May 16, 2015: Glissando.
Group Exhibition - Urban being / Beekeeping in the Cities. Skolska 28 Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic), November 21-December 12, 2014: The B-Film Keeper.
Special Screening - Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film (Durham, ON), 2011: The B-Film Keeper.
Special Screening @ Pleasure Dome & Inter Access (Toronto, ON), 2011: The B-Film Keeper
Group Exhibition - China's Massive Earthquake: An Invitational Exhibition organized by The Nanjing Arts Institute curated by Wang Wing (RCM Art Museum China, 2008): Sea-Tossed World 1 & 2.
Group Exhibition at the Public Library of Zottegem organized by EXIT (Belgium, 2002): Emerging Flemish Artists: collage/montage work.
Solo Show at the Center for Yoga and The Study of Movement in Antwerp (Belgium, 2002): ‘Hydrography, Geography and Memography’: Photography and Prints.
Group Exhibition - Living Art / Moving Images @ Khyber Center for the Arts (Halifax, 2002): Neuma.
Group Exhibition - Other than English: Electrons outside the Vacuum - PIER-21, Multi-Cultural Art Gallery (Halifax, 2002): 1000 Feet.
Group Exhibition - Living Art / Moving Images @ Dalhousie University Art Gallery (Halifax, 2001): Hydromancy.
Solo Screening – American Dance Association: Dance on Camera Showcase @ Anthology Film Archives (New York, 1999): Hydromancy
Solo Screening – Home Movies: Studio 303 (Montreal, 1999): Hydromancy
Group Exhibition - Project Y Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, Ottawa, 1999): Hydromancy
Special screening titled “New Narratives” (with John Zeppetelli): Ecran Indépendant @ Cinémathèque Québequoise (Montreal, 1999): Hydromancy – Freezing Time – Enige Ogenblikken.
Group Exhibition - Abel Joseph Gallery (Brussels,1997): Freezing Time (video and photography).
Group Exhibition - International Symposium of Artistic Bookbinding at the National Library of Quebec (Montreal, 1996): Tri-L’eau-Gie (handmade photo book in collaboration with Tonia Rudaz (Switzerland).
Solo Show - Flagging Film, Filming Flags: Notes on Cinephemera and Obsolescence. Gallery IMA310, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University. September 5-15, 2018: Video and Photography.
