This June, the very first Winnipeg Underground Film Festival (WUFF) gets underway, and the entire event is being put together by Open City Cinema, a local collective that’s been screening films in the city since May of last year.

Founded by film curator/Concordia Film Studies grad Travis Cole and experimental filmmaker Aaron Zeghers (who met at a course taught through the Winnipeg Film Group), OCC is fleshed out by filmmaker Scott Fitzpatrick (among other collaborators who drift in and out).

“One of the main reasons I decided to form Open City Cinema was because a lot of people seem to be leaving and it was really upsetting to see,” Cole says. “There’s a great film community here, but it seems like so many people hit the glass ceiling and want to move to Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.”

The collective began with an unspoken agreement to put together one screening each month, and its primary focus has always been underground cinema.

“These are films that operate more as pieces of art, like a painting or a collage, where they have one person’s idea behind them generally,” Fitzpatrick says. “They’re usually individually driven [and] I don’t think we’re showing anything that was made with much of a budget.”

After spending the last year putting together smaller screenings, Open City Cinema has been collecting enough material to kickstart an actual film festival which will span over three evenings at Frame Arts Warehouse (318 Ross).

“Part of the reason I wanted to do a festival was to actively enter into a dialogue,” Fitzpatrick says. “People know about Winnipeg and our experimental film scene, but they don’t recognize it as the hotbed it really is. If you look at the Australian International Experimental Film Festival, they played five Canadian films and they were all from Winnipeg. Something is obviously going on up here.”

Though Winnipeg is already home to the experimental WNDX Festival of Moving Image, WUFF’s organizers stress there are some definite differences between the two.

“The real difference is that they’re an established film fest and we’re the little guys. . . we’re basically just punk rocking it,” Cole states. “We’re throwing this stuff out there and hopefully because of that it’s more of a symposium. We hope other people will hang out and talk with other filmmakers.”

“We just want to create a community around both festivals,” adds Zeghers. “We want to keep creating that dialogue and ramping up more excitement for WNDX in the fall.”

Another difference is that the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival doesn’t rely on an open call. Everything is curated except for The 90 Second, a segment which kicks things off and features films under 90 seconds that were made within the last year

“We’ll basically screen anything,” Zeghers says. “It’s the opportunity for us to do something really fun and off the cuff.”

One of the many thematic programs is Draw On Everything!, which takes place on Sunday evening at 5:30 pm.

“All those films totally push the boundaries of what is considered to be animation,” Zeghers says. “It relates back to the whole ideology of the festival: pushing boundaries and creating a dialogue.”

“One of the films we’re showing is Ryan Hill’s Provincial Highway 44, which is sort of quasi-animated,” Fitzpatrick adds. “There were films that I didn’t think were animated.  You can definitely see the most narrative and the most abstract side by side.”

Overall, the festival’s content is primarily focused on filmmakers that do not reside in Winnipeg. There are more American films than you’ll find at WNDX, but many films from across Canada and a smattering of others from nations as diverse as Japan and Germany.

One specific individual highlighted is Jesse McLean, a Chicago-based filmmaker whose work will be shown during Saturday evening’s screening.

“She uses a lot of found footage, not from Hollywood, but a lot of Internet video and reality TV stuff,” Fitzpatrick says of McLean’s work. “This will be the Winnipeg premiere of her films.”

WUFF also dives into a bit of music, and there will be live performances from Ghost Twin and Solar Coffin, while Saturday will end with a VHS dance party that carries late into the night. There’s a lot going on and even the organizers can’t pick out the one thing they’re looking forward to the most.

“Just come to the first screening on Friday,” Zeghers says. “Then hopefully you’ll abandon your life for the rest of the weekend to hang out with us.”

Published in Volume 67, Number 26 of The Uniter (May 29, 2013)