Film

Deco Dawson's Films on Art

Friday November 2, 2012 at 8pm

Free admission • Followed by a Q&A with Deco Dawson at 9pm

This evening of Deco Dawson’s award-winning films on art will feature Dawson’s latest work, Keep a Modest Head, hot off the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival where it won Best Short Film. Four other films by Dawson will also be presented, including FILM(dzama), a fictional profile of Winnipeg artist Marcel Dzama that won Best Short Film at TIFF 2001.  

Deco Dawson is an award-wining filmmaker from Winnipeg whose 15 short films remain at times unclassifiable, continually blurring the lines between dramatic, documentary, animation, and experimental film. It is especially fitting to be showing a film about Marcel Dzama, one of thirteen Winnipeg artists included in the WAG’s current exhibition Winnipeg Now.

In addition to screening at major festivals worldwide, Dawson has been host to solo retrospectives of his work in France, Spain, the USA,  and Canada.

Keep a Modest Head is a dazzling, inventive portrait of Jean Benoît, the last member of the influential surrealist movement. Originally born in Quebec in 1922, Jean Benoît moved to Paris in 1948, met Andre Breton and was soon invited to join the surrealists.  Using an effortless blend of narration, visual effects, miniatures, archival footage, and a stunning sound design, Keep a Modest Head is as whimsical as it is humorous, a film truly as spirited and daring as the artist himself.

The 8pm screening will be followed by a Q&A with Dawson at 9pm.

Presented in partnership with On Screen Manitoba and Manitoba Film & Music.