photo | cruise america

 

two snapshots

 

*

top photo from marianne holmlund mendgen:

"We were driving through Saskatchewan to visit my mom's relatives around Regina, 

and my dad's family up near Outlook. 

We stopped at this little farmhouse somewhere along the way."

bottom photo ("Hectic Harriet") from another friend:

"my grandmother's cousin-in-law rushing down the stairs the day of my parents' wedding"

still | the latest news from deseret

 

still from 'the latest news from deseret'

christopher pavsek, 2025

photos | near cinematheque

claude monet | to see...

 

photo | near anton's

Burnaby, near Anton's

my movie montages

I love the movies. And I like making things. So I spend a lot of time making movies out of the movies. Here are links to some of my ongoing montage projects.  (Note: They're always best with headphones, or good speakers. The bigger the screen the better. Probably best at the theatre, or a gallery...)

Installation: 

Dal Schindell Gallery 

Sep 16 - Oct 3, 2026

Gallery closed Sundays

Several of my long form film montages will be featured this fall in the gallery at Regent College on the UBC Campus. The centrepiece will be the premiere of the 12-hour Date Movie, which moves through the twelve months of the calendar year using date-specific clips from thousands of films. Timepiece, which premiered in 2025 at the Richmond Cultural Centre, moves through twenty-four hours of clock time in one hour, a tribute to Christian Marclay's video masterwork The Clock. Also premiering will be the Cinema Prayer Chapel, a contemplative space featuring prayers of every kind drawn from world film, as well as other works celebrating the movies and movie-going.

gallery website

Date Movies

The whole obsession began with the project of finding date references in movies.  On June 6, 2004, I marked the 60th anniversary of D-Day by watching The Longest Day, which led to a search to find one movie for each day in the calendar year, undertaken by several participants in the Arts & Faith online conversation board. Which eventually led to the idea of creating mashups of multiple film clips representing specific days of the year, usually the birthdays of friends. I've created almost 100 such videos,  but many were posted on a defunct Vimeo account. Here are links to a handful I've put up on YouTube.

Jan 6  

Feb 7 

Feb 21 

Mar 1 

March 21 for Tom (new)

Apr 19 

April 24 for Doug (new)

May 13 

Jun 3 

Jun 7  

Jun 19 

Jul 12 | with extended credits 

Jul 30 

Sep 2  

Sep 11  

Oct 2  

Oct 30

Dec 22  

 

Another iteration of this whole dates-in-movies project was to build a thirty minute montage with one clip for each calendar day. I really like it. 

A Year At The Movies In Half An Hour

or one month at a time... (September is my favourite)

A Month At The Movies In Two And A Half Minutes 

January | dates only | dates titles events 

February | dates only | dates titles events

March | dates only | dates titles events

April | dates only | dates titles events

May | dates only | dates titles events

June | dates only | dates titles events

July | dates only | dates titles events

August | dates only | dates titles events

September | dates only | dates titles events

October | dates only | dates + titles 

November | dates only | dates + titles   

December | dates only | dates titles events 

I prefer the versions with no titles, just a stream of images and sound. But if you're curious about what movies the clips are from, or about the events depicted, there are versions including those things as well 

Dial V for Video

A tribute to video stores, a trailer for International Independent Video Store Day. 40 movies in 4:32.  Here.  

Good Time Diner

My son-in-law plays in a band, and they thought it would be a blast to project movie clips behind them while they play, and during breaks. So I got to make some really long montages! Welcome to the diner! Here's a minute-and-a-half trailer for one of their gigs, but unfortunately there are restrictions for viewing the longer montages. 

NT GUILTY: You need a good lawyer?

Movie clips about lawyers and the law, a graduation present for my daughter Katie's graduation from law school. Probably my favourite. Montage, not daughter.  Here. 

The Movies Go To The Movies: Marquees

A chronology of movie-going, as seen in the movies. A work in progress; here's an early version, starting with a 1915 screening of "The Curse Of Drink" at The Gem (from the film "On Moonlight Bay") through to "The Bicycle Thief" at The Rialto in 1991 (as seen in "The Player"). 

Earth Day International Film Festival: End of the World Edition

And here's the trailer for an imaginary film festival. Just for fun, to pass the time during the pandemic.

savon bartley | where i'm from

I'm from green bottles 
and brown water.
I'm from handlebars and cigarette runs.
I'm from gun store, gun store, gun store,
liquor store, funeral home, beauty salon, church.
I'm from wine colored hymn books.
Wooden pews fit for a bus stop.
I'm from pastors that preach like a wallet. 
I'm from C-sections.
Latch keys and night shifts.
Absent father. Single mother. Only child.
I'm from project windows and GED test-takers.
I'm from bail money. 
I'm from drive bys in broad day
smoke twirling like a choreographed gang war. 
I'm from Cadillac leather
with a body like a spaceship.
I'm from barber shop conspiracy theories.
Melanoma skin cancer. 
Remission. Recurrence. Survivor.
I'm from the foot my aunt lost in the surgery.
I'm from the bullet in my uncle's hand. 
I'm from you better be in this house before the streetlights come on.
I'm from dreadlocks swinging like bones in a windchime. 
I'm from men easily muddied by a drink. 
I'm from framed obituaries.
I'm from screen doors that watch over children
who believed lightning bugs were stars that wanted to play with them.
I'm from dropouts, I'm from legends.
I'm from I wasn't supposed to make it this far.


https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=872532825843367
 

sewn into the coat of blaise pascal

The year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November.

From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob, not of the philosophers 

     and scholars.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

Deum meum et Deum vestrum.

"Your God shall be my God."

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything else, except GOD.

     He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

     Greatness of the human soul.

     "Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you."

     Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

painting by Rene Magritte,

"Pascal's Coat"

andrea cohen | the committee weighs in

I tell my mother

I've won the Nobel Prize. 

Again? she says. Which

discipline this time? 

It's a little game

we play: I pretend 

I'm somebody, she

pretends she isn't dead.

photo | john langer | gospel truck, north vancouver, 1981

 

Ernie Ruff was his name. He had been drinking and whoring for a significant part of his life, when he went into the Penthouse looking for a girl, God spoke to him and told him the end was nigh and he needed to get the message out.

So he went and with what was left from an inheritance he had bought an airport runway staircase vehicle and fixed it up with wooden slats that carried evangelical signs. He lived over on the island if I remember correctly and drove down each summer until he died.

The car is in pieces in a works yard on the island now.

Aaron Chapman

norman maclean | art and grace

"All good things come by grace and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

hank nouwen pulp classics, volume 2: the return of the prodigal son

A shocking tale of wasted youth! He stole his father's money, fled his home town, and cast off every rule of decent society! He slept with hookers! He ate with pigs! And now... He's back! The long awaited sequel to the searing thrill-o-rama that shocked a generation! If you liked "The Prodigal Son," you'll LOVE... "The Return Of The Prodigal Son"!!

Also by this author: Son Of The Prodigal Son, The Bride of the Prodigal Son, I Was a Teenage Prodigal Son, and The Prodigal Son that Ate Pittsburgh.

police blotter, graham, TX

 

paige williams | bears in tahoe

"The kitchen is just strewn. 

It got a forty-pound bag of cat food, 

a thing of roasted garlic, 

my package of cookies.

It got into the coffee.

It got into a five-gallon bucket that Kathy saves butterscotch and chocolate chips and stuff in. Didn't eat a lot of those, but it spread them all over the floor.

It didn't get into the honey.

It got into the olive oil.

I've come into houses where a bear has torn the range hood off,

torn the microwave off.

The shelves are all broken and everything's collapsed,

or the doors are gone and the whole cabinet's off the wall.

Turnd over refirgerators.

A house here burned down because a bear broke in

and knocked the stove over. The electric igniters went off.

It tore the gas line open

gas started spewing.

I heard this snapping and popping.

It's ten-thirty at night, and I'm going, 

What the hell?

I walked out in the street and could see the flames.

By then, the whole house was engulfed.

The fire department saved the foundation."

*

Recently, an insurer received a claim that a bear had vandalized a Rolls-Royce;

investigators showed security footage of the incident to a wild-life biologist, who determined that the perpetrator was

a human in a bear costume.

*

"I've seen 'em go in through a skylight.

Dropped twenty feet through the house, then ransacked it, and broke a window to get out. 

Like, how'd they not break a leg with that?"

"They're very athletic."

*

edited from "Wild Side" by Page Williams

The New Yorker

December 2, 2024

a secret trove of rare guitars | hannah whitaker

 Photographs by Hannah Whitaker for The New Yorker

from the article "A Secret Trove of Rare Guitars Heads to the Met"

By Nick Paumgarter

The New Yorker | May 19, 2025

Leo Fender’s solid-body prototype is among the nearly six hundred instruments donated to the Met, tracing the influence of the twentieth-century guitar on American culture.

A J-50 acoustic guitar made by Gibson in 1955 and played by Mississippi John Hurt.

The prototype signature model made for Chet Atkins, by Gretsch, in 1955.

A Gibson Flying V played by Neil Young in the seventies and a Gibson Explorer from 1958.

A Sunburst Les Paul from 1959—the “Keithburst” that Keith Richards played 

during the Rolling Stones’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” in 1964.

The second solid-body guitar made by Paul Bigsby, in 1948, in Downey, California.

won kang | vancouver drawings

 

photos | ramón masats, spain

 

will rafuse | signs

paintings by will rafuse
of signs in vancouver, seattle, los angeles

rafuse studied art at capilano college
and currently resides in st john, new brunswick

original post aug 27 2010