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This book gathers voices across six decades of response to David Rimmer’s work, sometimes as personal missive or newspaper brief, sometimes as academic pronouncement or historical visitation. David was fortunate to receive early welcome mats from writers at the New York Times and Village Voice, not to mention local lights in Vancouver. The mid-career retrospective in Vancouver brought in a new rush of interest, and with his turn towards film/video hybrids in the 1980s a renewed critical analysis began, along with outraged art critics, foreign retrospective nods, letters of recommendation for Canada’s highest honours. The whole shebang closes with a text drawn from a film proposal that may or may not become emulsion, but makes for a fascinating read as an artist looks back on a lifetime’s work at the age of eighty.
Strange to think about a book about David though, he was never big on words. Words were part of the cover story that had to be seen through so that he could get down to some more fundamental relation, running it through his large and sensitive fingers. The sentences are gathered here not to take the place of his pictures, but to point the way back towards them. And some offer pleasures, rare and nearly forbidden, all their own.
Introduction
Recovering Lost History: Vancouver Avant-Garde Cinema 1960-1969 by Al Razutis (1983)
Underground Film Evening May Bring Surprises by John Driscoll (1969)
Letter from Vancouver by Tony Reif (1969)
The New Canadian Cinema: Images from the Age of Paradox by Gene Youngblood (1970)
Vancouver Letter by Kirk Tougas (1970)
Simple Genius by Andreas Schroeder (1970)
David Rimmer in conversation with Michael de Courcy (1985)
Intermedia Makes Waves by Brad Robinson (1970)
An Evening of Dave Rimmer’s Films by Gerry Gilbert (1972)
The Films of David Rimmer by Roger Greenspun (1972)
Quick – Who are David Rimmer and James Herbert? by Roger Greenspun (1972)
The Films of David Rimmer by Kristina Nordstrom (1972)
Short Films by Rick Hancox (1974)
Movie Journal by Jonas Mekas (1975)
Altered States of Consciousness by Leonard Horowitz (1975)
Honesty of Vision by George Csaba Koller (1975)
It’s Film All Right, But Is It Art? by Natalie Edwards (1976)
David Rimmer by Eleanor Beattie (1977)
Seeing Through the Fog by Clint Enns (2012)
Al Neil: A Portrait by Joyce Nelson (1978)
Garbage by Mike Hoolboom (2012)
West Coast Filmmaking: History by Tony Reif (an extract) (1980)
Surfacing on the Thames by Blaine Allan (1980)
A Critical Analysis by Al Razutis (1981)
‘My films are difficult to watch’ by Jamie Lamb (1981)
Rimmer turns film to art by Art Perry (1981)
Re-fusing the Contradictions by Colin Brown (1981)
Critical Perspectives on Vancouver Avant-Garde Cinema 1970-83 by Al Razutis and Tony Reif (1983)
David Rimmer by Peter Morris (1984)
The Repression of the Erotic in Experimental Cinema or ‘Safe Sex for the Literally Minded’ by David Rimmer (1986)
Terror by Stan Brakhage (1989)
Reproduction and Repetition of History: David Rimmer’s Found Footage by Catherine Russell (1989)
New Works Showcase by Blaine Allan (1989)
Experimental Cinema Series Opens Tonight by Jennie Punter (1989)
New Experiments, ed. Catherine Jonasson (1990)
David Rimmer interview by William Wees (1991)
David Rimmer: Film and Tapes 1968-1992 by Dawn Caswell and Jim Shedden (1992)
Handmade, or David Rimmer’s Divine Mannequin by Blaine Allan (1992)
Local Knowledge by Colin Brown (1992)
Twilight in the Image Bank by Catherine Russell (1993)
David Rimmer’s Vancouver by Mike Hoolboom (1994)
Lizard Film Scales the Art of Jazz by Peter Birnie (1995)
Deconstructing Narrative: Story-telling, Documentary, and Experimental Film by Peter Harcourt (1998)
Fringe Royalty: an interview (2000)
Seeing Through the Past, Again: David Rimmer’s Found Footage Films by Samuel La France (2014)
Nomination Statement by Michael Snow (2010)
Self-Portrait by David Rimmer (2012)
Films and Videos