In 2001, Solomon Nagler became the first Winnipeg filmmaker to attend the legendary Film Farm in Mount Forest, Ontario. Newly armed with the Film Farm’s process-cinema ethos and its hand-processing technical methodology, Nagler returned to Winnipeg and developed the summer-long $225 Film Experiment workshop in the city in 2002 jointly with Winnipeg photographer John Kapitany. This workshop would immediately change Winnipeg filmmaking by not only giving birth to experimental filmmaking in the city, but by also allowing women to more-easily enter a space that had previously been a legendarily locked door for them. The workshop created an unprecedented before-and-after through-line that forever changed the idea of Winnipeg filmmaking.
I’ve been examining the trajectory of the 225 and the inheritors of its feminist legacy for the past year with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Below are conversations I’ve recently had with some of the members of the 225 movement. The original 225 workshop workbook copy (left) is courtesy of Allison Bile.
