Seven of us braved the weather yesterday to go on a guided laneway tour led by cartographer and alleyologist Graeme Parry. We found lots of ideas in the nooks and crannies of the city & took some neat pictures. It was too cold to do the shooting skillshare afterwards so it’s been postponed to Sun, Feb. 15th, 1pm (weather permitting).

There’s another opportunity to meet up with some of the people involved with the lo-fi sci-fi project this Friday. One of the ideas we had to get musicians we know to watch a rough cut of the movie and improv along to it, and use the recording of the jam session as a soundtrack or soundtrack elements. That’s still something we’re curious about, and Jon Culp has a Super 8 screening that might give us a sense of how it could work.

Cutting between faded (“red shifted”) Eastmancolor industrial films, classroom-film curios, and Hollywood imagery old and new, the pictures interlock with the haunting semi-acoustic dissonances of local band Picastro, performing live with the film. Red Shift is a slowly disintegrating nightmare of utilitarian media gone wrong.

It’s a 40 minute non-narrative piece, however, so depending on how you feel about experimental film you might need to bring your patience as well as your $5 to the Trash Palace (89-B Niagara Street, just west of Bathurst). It’s this Friday Jan. 30th, 9pm.