Pushing Through

For three winters I followed a women’s ice canoe team based in Rimouski. My filmmaking process was exploratory: I used their training sessions to gather a bank of images and sounds from sources including microphones, contact microphones, hydrophones, and Go Pro cameras attached to the canoeists and their boat. These raw materials inspired an exploratory process in search of new, organic ways to exploit the medium.

In response to the unmediated, larger-than-life forms of the ice floes, I intervened directly on the medium, altering images to craft an arresting, extreme experience for the viewer that recreates what the ice canoeists go through. I then applied watercolour ink to the 16 mm film stock. Some digital images were also transferred to film and manipulated with hands-on techniques. The resulting combination of analogue and digital subverts the expectations of the spectator’s gaze.

The same leitmotif guided the sound design, whose aim was to create emotions, not statements. Though created in distinct parallel processes, the sound and video components grew out of a shared creative dialogue between the filmmaker and sound designer and musician Robin Servant. The sounds of the friction between boat and ice and the rhythmic strokes of the oar or footsteps when running and pushing the canoe were processed with electroacoustic effects, transcending the reality of winter for an enhanced introspection. The sonic experience takes on its full sense in the theater thanks to subtle, finely honed sound spatialization.

Taking these bodies in movement as a point of departure, I invite the spectator to become this body,