About Marielle Nitoslawska
“I am interested in the voice, how it is expressed, and in how we perceive and then represent what we perceive, so questions of cinematic form are crucial to me. I’m not interested in technology simply for its own sake, but am interested in opportunities that expand perception, experience and knowledge.â€
A native of Montreal, Nitoslawska received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from Concordia University in 1976, specializing in studio arts and art history. However, a summer job as an assistant editor for a project about John Grierson for the National Film Board of Canada pulled her into the world of cinema. In 1978 she moved to Poland to study at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, where she completed her Master of Fine Arts as one of the few female Cinematography department students in the School’s history. She remained in Poland for a decade, working as a filmmaker during the social and cultural upheavals that led to the fall of that country’s communist government. There, she shot numerous exploratory ethnographic films in 35mm and actively participated in the underground media arts movement in Lodz, with friends and mentors from the Workshop of Film Form.
She then joined the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema as a full-time faculty member in 1989 and was named Chair of the School in 2009. She has also taught at the Mexican National Film School (CCC), the Universidad Autonoma/Azcapotzalco, and has recently been collabotating with the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV). She also directs the Possible Movements Lab since establishing it in 2007.
As a director, Nitoslawska has seen her recent films Sky Bones and Bad Girl enjoy critical acclaim and extensive festival play; the latter film has become a landmark documentary investigating explicit representations of female sexuality. Nitoslawska is currently engaged with two other major works, the Grey Nuns Project and the Carolee Schneemann Project, which build on her experimental approach to structure and her innovative use of new technologies to advance her explorations into narrative and representation. Her work is currently supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Fonds Québecois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), the Hexagram Institute for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. In addition, Telefilm Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Arts Council (CALQ) provided previous support.
As a professor, Nitoslawska has worked with countless undergraduate and graduate students, guiding each to develop their own cinematic voice. She has taught the undergraduate courses Filmmaking II: Documentary Approaches, Filmmaking III: Non-fiction, and Cinematography, and numerous graduate seminars in Film Production Studio; she has supervised and mentored many graduate students. In 2006 she received the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award – a testament of her commitment to both her students and her art form.
Projects
Sky Bones
“You must die many times in your life to become yourself,†says Cisneros, who perceives these same rhythms in the self-creation of the individual artist. Engaging directly with his aesthetic concerns – the relation of life and death, the rhythms of rock and stars – Nitoslawska’s 1999 film Sky Bones uses time-lapse photography to capture the cycles of nature, juxtaposing these passages with lingering still shots that express an enduring presence. Her camera creates an elemental sensuality as it moves across water, sky, desert, and fire with a palette weighted by the colours of days and seasons, as bright midday deserts and snow-covered forest give way to deep blue twilight.
Sky Bones examines Cisneros’ relation to his art through his creation of a personal mythology. As he imagines it, the artist’s role as a creator provides a spiritual reconnection with the natural world. “We are losing nature, and ourselves with her,†Cisneros says, “(Yet) how can you get lost if you invent your landscape?†Like his art, the film explores a world that is deeply personal yet rooted in the immeasurable expanses of time and space.
Sky Bones (50 minutes) was shot on 16mm film, and was produced and directed by Marielle Nitoslawska. It appeared in many festivals and was nominated for Best Arts Film at the 1999 Hot Docs International Festival in Toronto.
Bad Girl
Marielle Nitoslawska’s 2002 film Bad Girl investigates explicit representations of female sexuality by women, exploring the pragmatic and philosophical questions they pose, with emphasis on the ways in which the creation of women-friendly pornography confronts and alters the expectations of male consumers. Ultimately, Nitoslawska is concerned with how we comprehend desire, gender and identity, how we understand and represent its history, and the resulting affect on culture and human relations.
Interview subjects include directors, porn actors, academics, sexologists, marketers and business people, and offer a comprehensive view of the motivations and constraints operating as women try to represent their own understanding of sexuality. Excerpts from female-directed films, both in and out of the pornographic genre, track thematic links between avant-garde. Included are works by artists like Carolee Schneemann (Fuses), the performance art of Annie Sprinkle (A Herstory of Porn), Catherine Breillat (Romance), and the woman-friendly porn of Candida Royalle and the Scandinavian Puzzy Power collective.
In exploring how ideas of female sexuality are rearticulated through these explicit films, Bad Girl also addresses the taboos surrounding overt female desire. Intellectually challenging, thoughtful, and engaging, Bad Girl appeared at numerous festivals, enjoyed a three-week run at Montreal’s Ex-Centris Cinema, and was broadcast on Télé-Québec (Canada) and Canal+ (France).
Bad Girl (58 minutes) co-produced by Informaction (Montreal) and Taxi Brousse (Paris), with support from SODEC, Fonds canadien de la television, Téléfilm Canada, Rogers Documentary Fund, Télé-Québec, Centre National de la Cinématographie (France) and Canal+ (France).
The Carolee Schneeman Project
The Carolee Schneemann Project, currently in-progress, is a feature-length film that experiments with the formal parameters of documentary while pursuing the same issues of representation, memory and history that pervade the artist’s work. The film assumes a textured corporeality through the different formats used by Nitoslawska, and through its integration of materials, including the Super 8 and 16 mm film used by the artist herself. Its structure – organic, and almost musically rhythmic – embraces Schneemann’s desire to explore knowledge embodied in a world mediated by the virtual image.
The Grey Nun's Project
The Grey Nuns Project blends historical documentation with cinematic innovation to enter that time in Quebec history before the revolution tranquille of the 1960s. The filmed materials respectfully document this disappearing world, while at the same time drawing on some of the most recent technologies available in high-definition video, stereoscopy and computer imaging to recreate its history. As we perceive through some of its images, the Motherhouse itself embodies the Grey Nuns’ faith in an ordered universe: chairs lined up row upon row, long sparse halls evenly punctuated by doorways, and living quarters tidy but sparse.
Integrating contemporary footage with archival materials, including architectural drawings, the Grey Nuns Project offers an experimental and evocative blend of narrative innovation, historical excavation, and ethnographic insight. High-definition footage details the Motherhouse today, transforming the historic chapel’s original architectural plans into a living virtual space, creating phantasmic layers of the ephemeral and the enduring.
While still in creation, the Grey Nuns Project will soon be an immersive video installation.