Super, Natural 2025
16mm/Colour/7:5 mins
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.
Contat me for a preview.
Sabattier Experiments, 2024 - 2025 (Ongoing, WIP)
B&W 35mm hand processed photographs.
Light and Land, 2023
16mm/HD, Colour, 7 mins
Through a series of landscape encounters, geography and light become antithesis to linear time and create new visual tapestries of environmental identity.
The contrasting topographies in Light and Land disrupt familiar visions of Canadian landscapes so that the specifics of each scene is understood in more complex terms. Lingering somewhere between fantasy and realism, this futuristic documentary underscores atmospheric phenomenon within mysterious environmental incongruence.
These cinematic tableaux are of resilience and intended to question landscape authenticity. The lasting emotional imprint is created by the momentum of each encounter, making the idea of ecological permanence all the more potent and questionable.
For Canadian viewers, you can watch on CBC GEM
International inquiries please contact me to preview: contact@kyathbattie.com
Now Available!
The music for Senescent Vivarium composed by Mount Maxwell includes two stunning scores:
Senescent Vivarium and Entropics.
“Working with a single synthesizer (the Arp Odyssey) the musician composed two separate works for the project. The main score "Senescent Vivarium" is a sprawling piece of kosmiche ambient in the style of 1970's synth gurus Jean-Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream - a drifting combination of warm tones and flickering arpeggios strongly reminiscent of Mount Maxwell's 'Blue Highway' releases. The second work, "Entropics", is a stranger and more fascinating beast, having more in common with the early tape works of Musique concrete outsiders like Tod Dockstader and Eliane Radigue and intended as a kind of nocturnal alternative to the main score".
- Hotham Sound Recordings 2022
Congress
16mm/HD/B&W/4 mins/2020
Mediated under flight and wing, possible collective memories are represented through a prism of vast tundra landscapes, a wrecked 19th century paddleboat, and ancient lichen fields. Time, place and history become nostalgic remnants from the Yukon Territory, with a final conclusion on common ground.
Night Garden
SD/HD/Colour/6 mins/2019
Filmed on location in my mother's garden and bedroom, nocturnal images attempt to parallel her resolve to surviving cancer for a fourth time, and her reflections on immortality to everyday rewards like her joy of shopping and fears of darkness.
Please contact me to preview: contact@kyathbattie.com
Not For The Faint of Heart
Super8/HD/B&W/3mins/2019
A travelling carnival at Northgate Mall in Regina, SK, provides the usual thrills and chills provided one accept the caveat that all rides are not for the faint of heart. Oscillating camera movements and close-ups create a claustrophobic experience except for one brief sky-high respite, and upon landing, a young boy is heard negotiating for extra tokens, underscoring the desperate desire for promised escapism.
Watch NFTFOH Here
Senescent Vivarium
16mm/HD/B&W/7 mins/2018
Transient narratives of familiar ecological cycles are pushed further into supernatural territory by the effects of hand processed 16mm black and white film, and a deeply atmospheric, magnetic sound score.
Watch Senescent Vivarium here.
Prism
Super8/HD/Colour/3 mins/2017
Fragmented moments filmed using prisms and diamond-like shapes used to frame various sequences found at my parents home, a brief moment of my mother rising from bed after a serious illness, and a final return to reflected light and creatures found at sea.
Watch Prism here.
Lookout
HD/Colour/BW/7 mins/2016
Gaining elevation is a very complex concept. The higher we ascend, the more removed we are from normal everyday affairs, but the broader our gaze becomes, the more profound our sense of our situation in the world. Lookout is a personal experimental documentary that examines this kind of elevation or ‘lookout’ through the discovery of human ashes atop a mountain, and a distinct, yet fragmented audio collage of 80’s mix cassette tapes.
"It is a stunning work that weaves together a heightened sensitivity to both nature and technology in the most surprising ways...and the writing, oh it soars, the blue blue sky, so enigmatic, inviting deep contemplation of what it is to be so embedded in the mortal coil". - Lynne Sachs, March 2018
Collapse
SD surveillance video/4 mins/2016
Using security surveillance footage from a compound hidden in a remote location on Vancouver Island, this short video follows a young girl while preforming some kind of security sweep.Based on conversations and recordings with a close family friend, Collapse is told from the now grown woman’s perspective, which alludes to a past trauma and heightened sense of paranoia about preparing for a forthcoming doomsday event.
Watch Collapse here.
Nocturne
4K/HD/Colour/21mins/2012
Nocturne attempts to move viewers on an emotional and intellectual level by its exploration of nocturnal space. The film diverts from traditional notions of narrative, character and drama, in order to emphasize the mysterious journey of a young woman through five intensely cryptic spatial encounters within the landscapes of Toronto’s ravine parklands.
Metaphysical and liminal spaces are represented through careful framing, and an intensely evocative sound design is meant to underscore overall feelings of anticipation, and unknown urgency.
Watch Nocturne here.
*Best viewed at night or in a very dark space*
Temps Mort
HD/Colour/7mins/2011
Temps Mort ('Dead Space, or Dead Time") refers to the film theory idea that long takes of space appear to be 'dead' or without characters or action.
Temps Mort is an exploration of empty spaces taken from a large University-specifically spaces that seem to have a technological and architectural patina or age to them, in effect, offering a sense of science fiction-like ambiance. I wanted to imply or give the feeling that these spaces had been recently abandoned by people, where two surviving telescopes locate or 'look' at the empty places out of automaton curiosity. Sound effects extracted from Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien help embellish the film’s minimalistic visual style and highlight nostalgic attachments for what is considered “futuristic”.
Watch Temps Mort here.
Black Creek
HD/Colour/8 mins/2011
Filmed in on location in Black Creek, North York, this film explores the representations of male violence and desire in relationship to a sleepless man's viewing of 80's blockbuster Rambo: First Blood Part II, and the contrasting strange nocturnal landscape of this notorious Toronto ravine.
Watch Black Creek here.