— by Steven Woodhead

Amanda Dawn Christie, an interdisciplinary artist and independent filmmaker from New Brunswick, has an impressive CV. Her work has been screened in countries in North America, Asia and Europe, and she’s returning to the city where she got her start for the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival. We spoke with her about her fondness for Atlantic Canada, and how she explains to people why there is fungus growing on her films.

Amanda Dawn Christie has had her films shown in countries around the world, from Korea to the Czech Republic and Britain, and she’s just moved back to New Brunswick near parents*.

Christie, an experimental filmmaker from New Brunswick, recently moved back from the Netherlands as her work visa neared it end, so she could have a more comfortable “home base” while her work circles the globe. She also admits that she missed her friends and family.

“This is now the first time in ten years that I’ve lived close to my family. I have a great relationship with them, and the whole thing is just fascinating and beautiful. There wasn’t really an intent, and I don’t really think I’m that sentimental, but people have described my films as being very sentimental after I used footage of my mom, and old voicemail messages [my parents] left me.”

Using her parents’ old voicemail messages in her films may strike some people as odd, but Christie is an experimental artist, and using the castaway bits of everyday life in her film projects is not all that unusual.

Amanda Dawn Christie Photo by Pia Massie, courtesy of amandadawnchristie.ca

Christie didn’t really grow into a filmmaker until she moved to Halifax in 1990s. There, she worked as a receptionist at the Nova Scotia Arts Council as a receptionist and got involved with the Atlantic Filmmakers Co-Operative (AFCOOP), for which she served on the Board of Directors from 1999-2004.

Christie says she had a love of art, photography specifically, instilled in her at an early age, but she came to filmmaking elliptically.

“Unlike all these other filmmakers that I knew, who had a story to tell, I came into filmmaking because I had images. I was bored of that rectangular box. I had images that I wanted to make move.”

That might be the best description of Christie’s work. The key to her films is that they are experimental, daring, and though they might rarely run past a lengthy six minutes, they are still as labour-intensive as any other filmmaker’s 15-minute narrative short.

One of her works is a piece called Mechanical Memory, a film stitched together from old Super 8 films of trains from her father’s workplace in New Brunswick, and footage of the family dogs wrestling in the yard. Throughout the film are small, snowflake-like designs that are the result of fungus growing on the film itself.

The physical manipulation of the film stock is just as much a part of the film’s meaning as the images. For Christie, it’s a comment on the use of film, and similar technologies, as a device that stores memory. And it’s not just technology - as anyone born and raised in the singular uniqueness of the Atlantic Canada could tell you, even familiar landscape can hold memory.

If you’re not an experimental film person the whole thing might seem frustratingly abstract, but Christie says she’s getting better at explaining her work to others.

“Some of my films use old footage of landscapes that have changed over time. It’s as if the landscape itself has a memory; and it is a memory. Landscapes and landmarks can trigger personal memories just like films and photographs can. So in a sense, a landscape or a landmark is just as much a mnemonic device as a film is.”

She cannot escape her community’s influence on her work, manifested in a theme she calls “regional identity”. She’s now back in New Brunswick working on a film about her native landscape. In Vancouver, her work used brash, abrasive noise effects as a way of marrying the beautiful natural scenery to the dire social situation in the city’s poorer communities.

“I’m interested in how landscape and geography impact and possibly even define how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to others,” says Christie. “The rolling hills, forests, hay fields, and marshes of New Brunswick played a large roll in shaping my identity and my relationship to the world. The bay of Fundy, the Tantramar marshes, and the Peticodiac River all play a certain roll in my identity as they hold key places in my personal memories and past experiences.”

Christie has reached a point in her career where her name is firmly entrenched within the small experimental communities that exist in pockets all over the world. It’s a realization that still feels odd to this woman who just returned home to live near her folks.

“I still feel like a newbie, even though all these big things are happening.”

*Correction: The original text stated that Christie had moved back in with her parents. This was incorrect. Christie had, for a very brief period, lived with her parents in Moncton upon returning from Amsterdam, but currently lives in Sackville. The author extends his apologies to Ms. Christie for the error. The error has also been corrected in the third-to-last paragraph of the story. (April 14, 2009)

** Correction: Originally read “mnemonical”, which was a spelling error and not stated by Ms. Christie. (April 14, 2009)