Latest posts from National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI)

Under the Radar

Posted: 09 Jun 2017 01:18 PM PDT

In the frontier days of the digital revolution, a team of Canadian engineers raced against NASA to be the first to design a computer processor that could transform satellite radar data into images of the earth’s surface.

Creative team

Writers: Erin Cumming, Catharine Parke, David Ozier
Director/producer: Erin Cumming

Filmmaker’s statement

Making Under the Radar was challenging on a couple of fronts. First, the process of distilling a highly technical and complicated story down to a 10-minute film that non-engineers can understand was tricky. Second, I had the added pressure of making a film about a close family member – my dad!

In the end, my dad loves the film (phew!) and we think it’s a great piece of Canadian history that everyone can enjoy and appreciate.

About Erin Cumming

I studied documentary film production and post-production at Capilano College from 2001 to 2003. I worked for several years at EyeSteelFilm in Montreal.

Since moving back to Vancouver in 2005, I have worked as an editor on several large budget factual TV series like Ice Pilot and Highway Thru Hell with Vancouver’s finest production companies like Omni Films, Great Pacific Media and Paperny Films. My work has garnered me a best editing award from the Canadian Cinema Editors.

I recently made the leap from the edit suite into the field by directing two documentary shorts. At first I was nervous about the shift in roles from editor to director, but once on set I realized my editing experience provided a bedrock of knowledge, and instinct took over immediately.

As a result I have two projects under my belt that I am extremely proud of. Under the Radar is about some groundbreaking work my father did in the seventies that pitted his engineering team against NASA.

The Apprenticeship of Raffael Cocco is about the quirky and emotional relationship between a father-son duo of bespoke tailors in Burnaby, BC.

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Tears of Inge

Posted: 09 Jun 2017 01:13 PM PDT

A profound human-animal and human-nature relationship is represented by a painted world filled with a camel’s emotion and tears. It is based on a real Mongolian nomadic story narrated by the creator’s grandmother.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Alisi Telengut

Filmmaker’s statement

When a mother camel has a painful childbirth she rejects her newborn and the baby camel is about to die of hunger. In order for the mother camel to accept the baby, Mongolian nomads look for musicians and singers to play sad songs for the mother.

As the music goes on the camel starts to cry and accepts her baby. We do not know if the mother is touched by the music, but it is sure that animals have souls and emotions as humans do.

I grew up under the influence of my grandparents who lived as Mongolian nomads and they told me lots of stories and legends about nomadic life. Since this particular lifestyle is gradually disappearing, I want to record the nomadic traditions with animation as my medium and this story represents the human-nature relationship in the context of land degradation in the prairies.

The film was painted frame by frame by hand under the camera with oil pastel as the main medium on a single piece of paper/surface. Every new frame was created on the top of the previous frame, and there was no cut or digital touch in the computer. The process was labour intensive, but a hand-painted piece still has its own charm and aura in our digital era.

About Alisi Telengut

Using painting as her medium Alisi Telengut creates animation frame by frame under the camera to generate movement and explore handmade and painterly visuals for her films. Her works have been culturally engaged and focus on nomadic ethnic minorities.

Her recent films received awards, have been screened in various worldwide film venues and exhibitions as moving image artworks, and have also contributed to enthnographic research.

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