Controlled Demolition

On Sunday May 17, at 8:30pm, XINEMA will be hosting our first outdoor event of the year, Controlled Demolition: an experimental film program guest curated by Dominick Rivers.

This program aims to expand the notion of destruction beyond spectacle or finality to consider what it means to dismantle and to transform, and how, within these processes, new meanings might take shape. Featured 16mm films by Ieva Balode + Michael Higgins, Kyath Battie, Sarah Bliss, Cooper, Dave Johnson, oneanders, Kristin Reeves, Dominick Rivers, and Robert Schaller approach this topic from a number of angles. Some turn toward the natural world to reveal systems already under stress, while others trace how social and psychological infrastructures fracture, exposing patterns of addiction and mental health that suggest breakdown is deeply intimate and systemic.

Through chemically destructive processes, material intervention, and chance, authorship opens to contingency and unpredictability, considering how control can be both constructed and destabilized. This tension reflects our current culture, marked by an acute awareness of instability, where systems that once promised order or coherence feel increasingly fragile. In this program, control becomes a negotiation that is partial and illusory, creating a structure shaped by adaptation, persistence, and the reimagination of what holds us together.

Screening:

Mother Nature (Canada, 2026)

Cooper

4.5 Min

Mother Nature is an abstract exploration of the natural world and its ongoing struggle for survival. Shot on 16mm, the film uses texture, movement, and form to express the tension between resilience and destruction within nature’s fragile ecosystems. The film has been physically altered through a series of material interventions—baked in an oven, bleached, hand-painted, and scratched—transforming the celluloid itself to mirror the erosion, violence, and beauty found in nature’s own processes. The experimental soundtrack was created by capturing the hidden sounds of plants through sensitive microphones, amplifying the subtle vibrations and internal rhythms of organic life.

Contains: Flashing imagery.

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Super, Natural (Canada)

Kyath Battie

7 min

>>> Excerpt

Vancouver Island, supernatural by construct and memory, is experienced though landscapes represented by colonial icons, mysterious brilliant fountains, and a curious peacock. A tableaux of sorts, each encounter is singular yet united by stunning and devastated beauty.

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Dreams Not Remembered (USA, 2024)

Dominick Rivers

5 min

Dreams Not Remembered is an exploration of the personal archive of the artist’s great-great-grandfather. This work weaves together his self-produced home movies, contemporary footage, and a rendition of his song “With You Again in Dreams,” to construct an understanding of his life and the people he cherished most.

Contains: Flashing imagery.

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Moth Print (USA, 2023)

Sarah Bliss

3.5 min

>>> Excerpt

Moth Print is a cameraless handmade film made in collaboration with the artist’s deceased father. The work traces lines of loss and confronts the failure of memory by laser printing directly onto clear film leader to create both optical sound and image. Each printed sheet contains 231 frames patiently composed and assembled one by one, consisting of self-shot digital video of a Galium Sphinx moth compulsively divebombing a light that could destroy it, and a manuscript page from her father’s unpublished memoir in which he describes visiting his own father who was dying of Alzheimer’s.

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Investigation Frog: An Introduction (USA, 2025)

Kristin Reeves

2.5 min

A frog, which is used as a dissection specimen in educational 16mm films, becomes an investigator of institutional betrayal within the education system itself. An experimental animation that utilizes laser-cut sections of 16mm film to physically combine segments from one 16mm film into another.

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On The Glue (Canada, 2025)

Dave Johnson

3 min

From the depths of London England’s Barracks district amongst the derelict weapons huts, comes a public service expose from the 1970’s revealing “THE HORRORS” of kids participating in the act of glue sniffing and its effects. The narrative is told in three parts: The reporter, a mother and her “addict son”, David.

Contains: Drug addiction, flickering imagery, and passed out.

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lost fps // they come out in the dark (Latvia, 2023)

oneanders

4 min

>>> Excerpt

It was a very cold winter day. oneanders had convinced her mom to film her and her horse in a snowy landscape. They all shivered, the wind was freezing, but it was all really exciting. Later, she went to the lab, did the processing, but after opening the tank, she saw that there was no image, just a dark film strip. oneanders had made a mistake while shooting and had lost the whole material. While still being very upset, she decided to still do something with this film. So she went on to destroy it with the household chemicals. From there, the film came alive.

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Three Years On (USA, 2019)

Robert Schaller

8 min

Three Years On sets out to convey the sense of confusion and disorder written onto the landscape by the raging waters that still affect life three years after a catastrophic flood. Shot with a homemade pinhole camera onto homemade emulsion.

Contains: Strobing light and imagery.

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Thanatophobia (Latvia, 2021)

Ieva Balode and Michael Higgins

11 min

Film is a contemplation on one of the most profound feelings—fear of death.

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A special screening of the workshop results.

Total program time (without workshop footage): 37 min

The screening will conclude with an in-person Q+A with visiting filmmakers Dominick Rivers, Kyath Battie, Robert Schaller and more (TBD).

This program will be held outside of our Norquay Park Fieldhouse. Please dress appropriately and bring blankets or lawn chairs to sit on the grass, as there will be limited seating available. Arrive early to secure the best spot. Accessible public bathrooms are open until 9pm; afterwards, indoor bathrooms will be available via a short ramp and 29” doorways. Sound can be loud, but earplugs can be provided free of charge. In the case of inclement weather, the screening area will be rainproofed. Please keep an eye on your inbox for updates.

If you require further financial or physical accommodation, please email [email protected].

Cover image: Ieva Balode, Michael Higgins, still from Thanatophobia, 2021, 16mm film to HD video, 11 min. Courtesy of the Artist.

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