Matthew Rankin

Haunted by visions of the future. Vilified by the political establishment. Charming beyond belief. Behold the dazzling ascent of Brian Mulroney, the “Boy from Baie-Comeau” who built a brand-new Canada.

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Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

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A demented parody of the Canadian government.

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16mm dreamwave micro-hallucinations in National Parks across Canada.

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Another chapter of the 16mm dreamwave micro-hallucinations in National Parks across Canada.

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Matthew spends Mother’s Day in his mom’s house slowly deleting her voicemails.

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Toronto, Canada, 1899. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) fervently believes that he is destined to become Prime Minister, but to do so he will first have to fight his personal obsessions and overcome the many obstacles he will encounter on his tortuous path to power.

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New York, 1905. Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to J.P. Morgan, his onetime benefactor.

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In the idealism and mutation of his home town of Winnipeg, the filmmaker Matthew Rankin launches a failed campaign of absolute inter-human solidarity entirely in Esperanto, the artificial language of world peace.

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This micro-epic short film is an inspired tribute to visionary avant-garde composer Walter Boudreau: his life, work, mischief, and boundless artistic curiosity. Both a documentary biopic and a wildly abstract hallucination, the film conceives of Walter Boudreau as a radical explorer, struggling against the inert mass of the cosmos, charting bold new paths of artistic freedom and audaciously expanding the frontiers of our known musical universe.

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A completely hand-made historical micro-epic about the final minutes in the life of Winnipeg's doomed Second World War hero, Andrew Mynarski (1916-1944). Combining wartime aviation melodrama with classical and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, silhouettes, bleaching, scratching, hand-painting and rubbing letratone patterns directly on the celluloid) Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic photo-chemical war picture on the theme of self-sacrifice, immortality and jellyfish.

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In the aftermath of the 1950 Winnipeg flood, Fernand floats listlessly through the sad, sunken landscape of ruin. His estranged wife prays for the drowned souls of Saint-Boniface.

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Originally released in 2006, Kubasa in a Glass presents a digitally warped reflection of Winnipeg’s brief and disposable self-image, as seen through local no-budget and public access television of the 1980s.

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An examination of Rory Lepine, who sent Winnipeg into a frenzy when he beat local legend Burton Cummings with a beer bottle in a 7-Eleven in 1985

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Only the electrifying courage and love of Québec nationalism can save the citizens of Winnipeg from committing mass suicide.

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Winnipeg Film Group. Deep in the winter of 1986. Guy Maddin is in the process of filming Tales from the Gimli Hospital and needs to rub a dead seagull on somebody's chest. Immediately, Dave Barber agrees, submitting his bare flesh to Maddin's road kill and to film history. (This film was commissioned by the Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque for its 25th anniversary, Silverscope)

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An experimental montage of the exteriors of apartment buildings

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Found-footage tribute to Winnipeg salesman and video artist Nick Hill.

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Commissioned self-portrait of the artist as metaphysical remix of Abbas Kiarostami's "Close-Up" recorded on a cellphone.

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On a moonlit street corner, a Parisian waif sits dejectedly on a doorstep, mournfully clutching a dogless leash.

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A found footage video essay tracing Winnipeg's civic pathologies, aesthetic fabulations and exquisite strangeness through the prism of its own low-budget, lo-fi TV advertising produced between 1975 and 1992.

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A bizarre video collage created from the ashes of Winnipeg's local television broadcasts of decades past, detailing the rise and fall of the Winnipeg Jets.

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A man confronts painful memories of a love affair now over. But he is perplexed by the appearance of a disgusting creature that he just can't get rid of. But can one really release oneself from the abominable things that haunt us?

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In space, a charming little planet named Pluto dreams of joining the Solar System’s official dance troupe. With the help of her asteroid friend, Ceres, and her human discoverer, Clyde William Tombaugh, she will do everything she can to make it happen. In this children’s film, where humans and planets share the spotlight, viewers will accompany Pluto on her quest for fame, until the moment she must face her destiny.

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In the late 1990s, a family of six settles into their new home on Vancouver Island, as internal dynamics are slowly revealed through the experiences of the youngest child, Sasha. Their fresh start is interrupted by the increasingly dangerous behavior of Jeremy, the family's oldest child.

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Two cyclists face off in a brutal cross Canada bike race.

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Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

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1987: While the other students wonder if new kid Robin is a boy or a girl, Robin forges a complicated bond with the school bully, making increasingly dangerous choices to fit in.

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Set on carrying out her task with dedication, a woman is obsessed with watching over anonymous interiors and occupying them. Both a custodian of the premises and a ghostly presence, she becomes an echo of how we relate to time, solitude and the melancholy of forsaken spaces.

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Haunted by visions of the future. Vilified by the political establishment. Charming beyond belief. Behold the dazzling ascent of Brian Mulroney, the “Boy from Baie-Comeau” who built a brand-new Canada.

Open details →

Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

Open details →

16mm dreamwave micro-hallucinations in National Parks across Canada.

Open details →

Another chapter of the 16mm dreamwave micro-hallucinations in National Parks across Canada.

Open details →

Toronto, Canada, 1899. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) fervently believes that he is destined to become Prime Minister, but to do so he will first have to fight his personal obsessions and overcome the many obstacles he will encounter on his tortuous path to power.

Open details →

This micro-epic short film is an inspired tribute to visionary avant-garde composer Walter Boudreau: his life, work, mischief, and boundless artistic curiosity. Both a documentary biopic and a wildly abstract hallucination, the film conceives of Walter Boudreau as a radical explorer, struggling against the inert mass of the cosmos, charting bold new paths of artistic freedom and audaciously expanding the frontiers of our known musical universe.

Open details →