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<\/a>Montreal filmmaker Kim Kielhofner\u2019s The Coldest Day of The Year<\/em> is screening at this year\u2019s Antimatter. Kielhofner happened upon the craft while she was in school specializing in fibre art.<\/p>\n \u201cI always just really loved film,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you go to school, you get access to equipment and it\u2019s your time to try things, and it really fit for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 2005, Kielhofner has created more than 30 films, including The Coldest Day of The Year, <\/em>a conceptual piece that \u201ctakes place in a future where a cataclysmic event has made tracing a coherent meaning of the past and recounting a narrative of the present impossible,\u201d according to the Antimatter festival program.<\/p>\n Rather than using a typical plot structure for the film, Kielhofner has chosen to use an abstract framework to explore how people interact with themselves and the world at the meeting place between the inward and outward manifestations of self.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about literal events, it\u2019s more of a situational hypothetical setup to explore ideas about certain things, like what a person does in solitude,\u201d she says, attributing her inspiration to the novel The Wall <\/em>by Marlen Haushofer. \u201cThis woman wakes up one day and finds that there\u2019s this invisible wall that blocks her off from the rest of the world, and she has no idea if she\u2019s alone, or if time is still going on. The only way she can make sense of this is to focus on daily tasks of staying alive, so that book kind of led me into my work.\u201d<\/p>\n The film is presented as a narrative flow of spoken-word poetry which evokes haunting feelings of loneliness and isolation, diving into the inner voice of a woman who is alone in a frozen wasteland with nothing but herself for company, while seeing fleeting ephemeral ghosts of past humanity on the horizon.<\/p>\n The sombre storytelling is strongly contrasted by visuals emphasizing bright colours, geometrical shapes, and flowing abstract movement. The cinematography creates striking visual impressions\u2014a \u00a0snapshot of any scene could easily be framed as an independent work of art. Kielhofner says that the contrast between a dark narrative and brightly coloured visuals is a compelling dynamic she favours.<\/p>\n \u201cI always work with colours, it\u2019s how I explore things, it\u2019s the formal language I use,\u201d she says. \u201cI think my work is pretty dark, but maybe on the surface you don\u2019t necessarily get that, so it\u2019s a juxtaposition I like to play with.\u201d<\/p>\n Oregon-based filmmaker Jennifer Hardacker\u2019s movie Close as Brothers<\/em> is screening at Antimatter this year; Hardacker says she was inspired by David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cI was quite young when I first saw that film, not quite 15, and I had been interested in creative storytelling in general,\u201d says Hardacker. \u201cI actually thought maybe I fancied myself a fiction writer, and then I realized that film worked with my brain better because I\u2019m a visual thinker. The way [Blue Velvet<\/em>] tells the story so visually\u2026 it just opened my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Close as Brothers<\/em> explores the relationship of her two sons\u2014August is on the autism spectrum, while Ulee is considered neurotypical. This distinction didn\u2019t make sense to the brothers as children, but over time, their differences grew more noticeable.<\/p>\n \u201c[August kept teasing Ulee], telling him he was acting like a \u2018real teenager\u2019 and I would ask him, what does that mean? It had this negative connotation that real teenagers were more emotional, more interested in their friends then their family,\u201d says Hardacker. \u201cI thought it would be interesting to sit the two of them down to have a conversation, because it was clear that they were starting to grow apart.\u201d<\/p>\n The film focuses on recognizing the diversity of each individual human being.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a tendency to think that there\u2019s one way that people should be, and [when they] don\u2019t conform to that, we think they\u2019re different. The important thing to remember is we\u2019re all different, all unique,\u201d says Hardacker. \u201cHopefully this will help people think about meeting people where they\u2019re at and appreciating them for who they are, rather than how they do or don\u2019t conform to a sense of what we would consider normal.\u201d<\/p>\n This idea is encapsulated perfectly by this dialogue from the movie:<\/p>\n Ulee: \u201cSo do you think you should just be treated like a normal human?\u201d<\/p>\n August: \u201cNo. I don\u2019t think that anybody should treat each other like normal humans. We need to treat each other like people, not the same. You shouldn\u2019t treat me differently because I\u2019m autistic; you should treat me differently because I\u2019m August.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>