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Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy
(The Neoist Beach Edit, 73 min)
Starring Istvan Kantor, Produced and Directed by Wesley Rickert
At the NAC, Tuesday 16 September
Screening at 8:30PM
Admission $5 or PWYC

Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy is an independently financed & produced project by artists living and working in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This digital art film was written and directed by Wesley Rickert, and using temporary studio & outdoor locations, including Toronto City Hall, Kensington Market, Little Italy and the city’s bicycle lanes, as well as Florida’s sight-seeing coastal highway A1A.  These locations provide place and time references for an otherwise timeless kabuki opera film narrative crashed by absurdist poetry and elaborate costumes, stylized movements and an original sound-track by the electronic noise orchestra Burning Iceberg.

In the confusing words of the poet musician director Wesley Rickert, this film is a “tin-foil road-trip to Florida & the British Museum, in faster Chinese that dialogues over the electric kettle of Toronto’s City Hall and rotates in perpetual stillness towards a tsunami of row-boat performances”.

Floating, sinking and swimming in an ocean of culture where it is always 6’o’clock, forever broadcasting and radiating the infamous international art-criminal Istvan Kantor (as the Neoist Pied Piper), Art Szombathy (as Louis the IV), Ian Malone, (as Juan Ponce De Leon), and Christina Kozak (as the universe expanding Tally Aurora), all wisely guided by Henry Benvenuiti (as Captain Smith), tempted by The Hercinia Arts Collective (playing as Sirens), Sandra Fitzsimmons (as Liberty), joining Tonya Henry (as an old flame), and Eszter Jagica (as the fountain of youth), Olivia Roblin, (as Janus), the flowing Brooke Stubbings (as the swimming passengers), and Kirsten Webb (a groovy disco Gargon), Kathleen Reichelt (as the Ventriloquist), the plastic Amber X, (as the Captain’s Hallucination), and painting it all on the coldest waters, Ashley Zarowny (as the happy Vincent Van Gogh).


CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
NAC’s [NO] VACANCY Film Festival
Making stories of motels and life on the road

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: Wednesday 24 September

Calling filmmakers, media artists, performers, musicians, motel lovers!

[NO] VACANCY, an installation in the Niagara Artists Centre’s Show Room Gallery, celebrates Niagara’s motel culture.

It has been created so that NAC members can shoot film works using the installation as a series of sets to evoke motel culture. The installations, created by Niagara Falls’ art collective Brainkite, and featuring contemporary photography by Oliver Pauk and Zach Slootsky, are available for use by NAC Members between Wednesday and Saturday from 12 noon until 4PM beginning Wednesday 30 July and ending Friday 19 September. Completed videos must be submitted to NAC by Wednesday 24 September.

Create work for any or all of the vignettes installed in the gallery:

  • A completely furnished motel room with a functional coin-operated vibrating bed and luxurious heart shaped hot-tub;
  • A 60s era station wagon with a rear-projected moving landscape
  • An outdoor swimming pool with lawn furniture and diving board

Participating artists will have access to the wide range of video making equipment listed here. All submitted films must be no longer than ten minutes.

A jury will select films to be screened on Saturday 4 October followed by a reception. CARFAC recommended artist-fees will be paid to selected artists or groups.

For more information or to schedule your session contact Natasha Pedros at natasha@nac.org.