Trailer
The sounds and images of Sonya Stefan and Stephanie Castonguay blend together in a common quest to transmit a sense of awareness of the interconnectedness between all beings. Stefan’s images zoom into miniature worlds as well as grandiose natural wonders in which manifest elements of the Earth. During a daily walking practice, she collects her images with both digital and 16mm apparatus, which are then composited to create meditative loops. Echoing Stefan’s universe, Castonguay’s disruptive sound seeks to play with aural textures by blending sounds of nature with electrical impulses. Working with errors, accidents, and bugs induced by her own sound machines, such as a pirated CD player and a modified scanner head, Castonguay explores the interconnection between the sonic and tactile senses.
This film is part of the FIFA EXPERIMENTAL section program BACK AND FORTH.
This film is part of the FIFA EXPERIMENTAL section program BACK AND FORTH.
| Director | Sonya Stefan, Stephanie Castonguay |
| Editing | Sonya Stefan |
| Music | Stephanie Stephanie |
In Partnership with
Session
Image tirée du film Sentient Beings // Image from the film Sentient Beings
Image tirée du film Sentient Beings // Image from the film Sentient Beings
Image tirée du film Sentient Beings // Image from the film Sentient Beings
Production
Sonya Stefan
Sonya Stefan is a media and dance artist whose specialty is analog (16mm|VHS), digital (Sony a7siii), and Live Feedback projection. Presently in-creation with Petrikor Danse project Cuña, the collaboration explores menopause through video mapping the body. She recently finished the film Truss Arch with her 80-years-old mother Angelica, a deconstructed dance film influenced by the drama dance Flashdance. The work concentrates on female identity and culture and encapsulates some anxieties and tensions existing within the bodies of two generations of women; it won the Best National Short or Medium-Length Film Award at RIDM — International Documentary Festival Montreal in 2021. Her most recent collaborations are with multimedia dance company Animals of Distinction, experimental music and performance act Group A and Toronto’s Newton Moraes Dance Theatre.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
The Truss Arch (2021)
Stephanie Castonguay
Driven by experimentation, Castonguay investigates electronic audio circuits as a process which, from its seemingly silenced state, manifests into a tangible and sensitive sonorous language. By tinkering her DIY devices using obsolete and barely audible machines, she reveals subtle energies at a microscale, amplifying the electromagnetic resonances and glitches unexpectedly hidden within. Playful, ethereal and “darkly contemplative”, her performances embody a ritualistic approach, evoking the liminal space between the realms of the imperceptible and the material. Her work has been presented in Montreal and abroad: perte de signal (Canada), Eastern Bloc (Canada), STEIM (Netherlands), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Greece), Música Ex Machina Festival (Spain), and performed in various festivals such as Sight & Sound (Canada), Instruments Make Play (Netherlands), Festival Arte Sonoro Tsonami (Chile), Festival Les Percéides (Canada), MUTEK (Canada), Espacio Fundación Telefónica (Peru), and Suoni Per il Popolo (Canada).
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Apophenia (2021)
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