When SHAW Cable purchased Winnipeg’s local cable station VPW, rumor circulated that they had destroyed the public access television archives and were systematically dismantling the public access services. Shortly thereafter, artist Daniel Barrow began researching, compiling and archiving a history of independently produced television in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
In the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a golden age of public access television. Anyone with a creative dream, concept or politic would be endowed with airtime and professional production services. Winnipeg Babysitter traces unique vignettes from a brief synapse in broadcasting history when Winnipeg cable companies were mandated to provide public access as a condition of their license. Because the archives were destroyed, programs could only be found in the VHS collections of the original producers, television collectors, fans and enthusiasts. Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history.
Daniel Barrow performs an overhead projected commentary, tracing the histories of public access television in Manitoba, and describing the various biographies of each television producer and personality.
About the Ironworks Series
VIFF Live is giving four Resident Artists the opportunity to immerse themselves in the 2023 Festival and perform at The Ironworks.
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Guest
Daniel Barrow
Artist, Curator, Archivist
Winnipeg-born, Montreal-based artist Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies to present written, pictorial and cinematic narratives centering on the practices of drawing and collecting. Since 1993, they have created and adapted comic book narratives to “manual” forms of animation by projecting, layering and manipulating drawings on overhead projectors. Daniel Barrow has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. He has performed at The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), The International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art TBA Festival, and the British Film Institute (London). Barrow is the winner of the 2010 Sobey Art Award.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
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Hanging by a Wire
The Himalayas, Aug 22, 2023: a cable car bearing 8 passengers (six of them schoolkids) is left dangling 900 feet above the ground when two out of three cables snap. This nailbiting documentary recounts the increasingly frantic rescue attempts.
A Sad and Beautiful World
This Lebanese love story chronicles the romance between a level-headed businesswoman and a romantic restauranteur across several decades in wartorn Beirut. It's funny, charming, melancholy and you'll feel it all.
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill + Q&A
In the early 1990s, director Larry Weinstein and music producer Hal Wilner brought together an extraordinary line up of performers to pay tribute to the great German composer Kurt Weill, among them Nick Cave, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey and Elvis Costello.
Union County
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Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.