Alex MacKenzie

YUL20A

A readymade of sorts, animating the tarmac as landing protocols fuse with painted arrows and guidelines on bruised asphalt. Distinct concrete squared segments are reinterpreted as film frames flickering past, with this hypnotic and immersive taxiing finally giving way to a rush of unbuckling.

The Hollow Mountain

A landscape film of topography, contours, nature in abstraction. Using a modified 35mm handcranked 1920-era projector in concert with a variety of lens interference techniques, pulsing and dimensional imagery are manifest live. Filmed with a 35mm handcranked camera and numerous non-camera techniques from the top of a mountain on an island off the west coast of Canada. All processing and printing done by hand.

Chop & Steele

Follows childhood friends turned professional comedians, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, the founders of the Found Footage Festival. When Nick and Joe book their gag strongman routine on unsuspecting morning news shows, their pranks go viral and land them in federal court with a vengeful media conglomerate. The stress of the lawsuit and pressure to continue their pranks threatens their livelihood and tests their lifelong friendship.

Pinhole Park

Created using a 35mm film tin modified into an outward-looking 59-pinhole camera that registers images on a single film loop mounted in the tin. Each loop is exposed in one moment with 59 pinhole "lenses" to create as many distinct images that, when presented in series, create a panning of the landscape in various directions. The work was exposed on outdated black & white 35mm print stock acquired from Archives Canada discards, and processed by hand in Caffenol chemistry, a less environmentally impactful developer made with coffee, vitamin C and washing soda.

Think Before You Think: A Portrait of Rick Raxlen

"Think Before You Think" is a portrait of film poet, animator and artist Rick Raxlen. Shot on 16mm film and digital video at his Victoria, BC home and studio over the course of a year, the film follows Raxlen’s daily practice, uncovering the rituals and gestures of a creative process. Mining the highly specific and personal nature of this life-sized project, excerpts from Raxlen’s films, drawings, paintings and mark-making from a 50+ year art practice combine with hand-processed and manipulated film materials to play off the rites and relaxed rigour of his unique approach to making a life.

Mall Emotions

Two loops taken from a French film promoting early shopping mall culture are bipacked and heavily manipulated beyond the lens to create a dreamlike dimensional space whose shadowed figure is forever travelling across the frame to find their way out of the delusion of capital. Performed with a single 16mm projector. Commissioned by the Sawdust Collector (a curatorial collective based in Vancouver) and performed with live audio by Clare Kenny.

Phosphene

A suite in four movements performed with two 16mm projectors. Created with a series of film loops rendered individually with sprayed paint, scraped and abraded softened black emulsion, pin and hole punctures, india ink craquelure and meticulous frame by frame application. By manipulating the image, introducing carefully orchestrated lens interference with colour gels, frame-edge masking, vignetting and glass objects, Phosphene Induces a variation on closed-eye vision and non-light hallucination: a subtly immersive and sublime sculpting of light.

From Falaise

Shot near the Falaise Park Iris Film Collective Fieldhouse, processed at Niagara Film Lab in Toronto and then buried in the nearby garden. A literal Landscape Film. Made for the inaugural One Take Super 8 event in Vancouver, presented by Iris Film Collective. Audio: The Cyrillic Typerwriter's Freshly Minted Medal.

Apparitions

An expanded cinema work exploring the transitional space between image and abstraction, and nature and culture.

Effulgence

An ode to childhood and nature's passing in an urban world, contrasting refilmed vintage Vancouver tourist bureau promos with original negative Tri-X shot from the back porch and bucket processed.

Underfoot

This experimental animated short dissects the Earth's surface and soil. Filmmaker Alex Mackenzie uses a specially built film exposure device to study the insect world, with remarkable results. Living insects are rendered as photograms on the surface of film stock, pulsating and teeming with life.

Underfoot

This experimental animated short dissects the Earth's surface and soil. Filmmaker Alex Mackenzie uses a specially built film exposure device to study the insect world, with remarkable results. Living insects are rendered as photograms on the surface of film stock, pulsating and teeming with life.

Waiting Room

A material-based film work that speaks to the various states of tension, calm, frustration, apprehension, injustice, inequity, and struggle felt in our respective waiting rooms. 16mm found footage is manipulated using optical printing, layering and reprocessing. The simultaneous banality and stress of waiting undergoes a physical transformation into an active and highly charged materiality informed by our personal projections and desires. Premiered on the VanLive! public art screen at Granville and Georgia Streets (Vancouver, BC Canada) May 2 through June 5, 2022. Commissioned for Platforms: We Are Here, Live by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.