Starting January 13, the Projections series presents Mamori, an abstract short film directed by Karl Lemieux and produced by Julie Roy of the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio.
The experimental Montréal filmmaker Karl Lemieux, a native of Kingsey-Falls, grew up with the Festival international de musique actuelle held in nearby Victoriaville. Very early on, he decided to create a visual equivalent to new music. He studied cinema at Concordia University, and from his first short film, he showed an interest in the relationship between image and sound. Together with Daichi Saito, he co-founded the collective Double Negative dedicated to producing and exhibiting experimental film. He has also participated regularly in concerts and performances in which he projects and manipulates— live—16-mm films on two to seven projectors at once, including his memorable contribution to our Friday Nocturnes on April 4, 2008 with Pas Chic Chic.
Mamori takes its title from a place in the Amazon forest. At the invitation of Spanish composer Francisco Lopez, a leading figure on the avant-garde music scene, Lemieux took part in a creative residency at Lopez’s Mamori ArtLab, where sound artists compose from field recordings. Lemieux tried to capture the textures of tropical vegetation and its various transformations according to the phenomena of light. The film’s sound track is an original composition by Francesco Lopez.