From his home in El Paso, Willie Varela has been making personal, experimental moving image work since 1971. The films and videos collected in this program are a sampling of Varela’s massive body of work, and include environmental portraits, experiments with abstract light forms. His work is informed by a disparate range of influences — including Chicano culture, Catholic iconography and ritual, and mass media. Varela’s work is thus a nexus of regional identity, faith, and technological experience. By this, Varela’s films transcend distinctions of formal and social investigation. His early super 8 films emphasized perception and gestural abstraction. Varela has described them as being “domestic in nature … concerned with the rhythm and the dailyness manifests, like in the films of his friend Stan Brakhage, as a record of a life of passionate visual exploration. In his early abstract films, such as Becky’s Eye, transforming coloured light suggests, at times, a gradient iris, or an inflamed sclera, and even when these rhythms are slowed, the film remains ambiguous in its content.
Programmer: Stephen Broomer
Co-presented by The 8 Fest Small-Gauge Film Festival, Pleasure Dome, Liason of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT)
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After an amazing week of incredible films, eye-opening documentaries, encompassing animations and lively artist talks, what better way to finish our festival than with a Closing Party. Come join us at CineCycle for a night of fun, dance, food and party Featuring DJ Joshua Perry “Classic Roots” who will be bringing his unique brand of Electronica and pow wow techno.
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