ripples: what we make lives beyond us, 2023, direct animation on super8 film
a failed super8 film is bleached and animated by hand, pulling into view cascading rhythms of colour and light that return to and pulsate out from a centre.
This film was made as a gift to young and first-time filmmakers in Manitoba.
music: Glitter by respectfulchild
Special thanks:
Jelly (www.respectfulchild.bandcamp.com) for allowing me to use their song “Glitter” as the soundtrack for this film and the soundtrack for my life as I made this film
Sabrina Sethi, whose place I was staying at when I made this, and whose hair dryer helped to quicken the process of making this film
Kristiane Church, the projectionist for the onetakesuper8 event this film premiered at
Heidi Phillips and Hagere Salem shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, who were the co_directors of the film festival at which this film premiered
Dylan Baillie and other 2023 staff at the Winnipeg Film Group, who provided equipment support and administration work toward getting the film and cameras into the hands of participants, for the many years the event was held
All the other staff and volunteers who worked the onetakesuper8 event, and the rest of the 2023 festival
All the people I bumped into and filmed in any of the many failed takes and versions of this film
Rhayne Vermette, Lindsay McIntyre, Sara Sowell, Franci Duran, Nazli Dinçel, five artists who all taught direct animation workshops in Winnipeg that I’m blessed to have partaken in over the years. I consciously reference Rhayne Vermette’s seminal direct animation Black Rectangle in one part of this film. The former three artists in this list provided film from their own archives for us to work with in their workshops and beyond, and I used pieces collected from these workshops in this film as an ode to these lineages of education. The latter four artists are based in places other than Winnipeg and were flown in to present their work and their workshops, and so I thank the programmers who brought these artists to Winnipeg, and made their work accessible to local audiences.
All of these workshops I partook in to learn direct animation were either FREE to participate in, and/or the *participants* were PAID to participate. My education was made possible because it was intentionally made accessible by the arts workers who do the administration work to make these dreams a reality. They open the gates rather than keeping them. All said arts workers who chose to make these workshops accessible are themselves working artists, and I believe this is why they have such a commitment to opening the gates, because they themselves have the ongoing lived experience of being in the same position as the communities they serve. Vive Le Artist Run Initiatives.
the making of ripples
ripples: what we make lives beyond us was made as a work that responded directly to the audience it was to be presented to. I made ripples for a local onetakesuper8, which is a project that gives (often first-time) filmmakers a roll of super8 film and a super8 camera. Participants are tasked with shooting the roll of super8 and then submitting it back to be processed. All edits happen in-camera, there is no post-production. All participants and the audience view the film at the exact same moment, at the screening. At this screening, I knew that folks who attended this event often didn’t attend any other events at the festival, or film festivals more broadly. It was an audience that was closer to “the public” / “the people” rather than the bubble of an existing “art / film world” and so I was motivated to spark a level of curiosity about experimental film that may cause them to further investigate the medium and ecologies around it. This experiment was an attempt toward closing the gap between art and the public.
For my participation in this project, I had the particular audience in mind – many young and first-time filmmakers, and their friends and families, and I wanted to make something specifically for them. This prompted me to think about how I could expand their understanding of the possibilities of experimental film. At first I storyboarded the entire film, which included laborious in-camera animated sequences and montages, and then I shot that film — or I thought I did — the canister of film failed. So I changed canisters. More Failure. I changed cameras. More failure. The film wanted to be something beyond what I was trying to have it be. I asked and asked the film, “What do you want to be?” After changing many different variables and them all mysteriously, relentlessly failing, I understood that I was being asked to push beyond the limits of shooting in-camera. In one final push, I still had a roll of film, assumed to have failed, sent to the lab. As expected, it was sent back with a notice that there was nothing on it.
I asked the facilitators if I could do an expanded cinema performance on the night instead. I was now assuming that the Universe wanted me to expose these filmmakers to expanded cinema instead. Two days out from the screening, I was told that the facilitators didn’t want to incorporate a performance because the schedule for the evening was tight so they didn’t want to bring in more elements. I understood.
I then asked if I could submit a direct animation as my film and was approved to do so. I bleached a roll of found footage super8film (if I were to change one thing about my process of making this film, I would look more closely at the images existing on the film before I bleached it, and have a little more mindfulness, saving more of their trace to be more visible in the final film. I reconsidered this aspect when I received feedback from filmmaker Leslie Supnet that the images that did sneak through and appear momentarily at the beginning of the film, including a shot of a house, were very evocative). On the almost completely blank, bleached-out film, for 48 hours I laboriously cut up minuscule pieces of other films and stuck them to the tiny frames of super8 film. There is approximately 3,600 frames in a standard canister of super8 film(50 feet / 15 metres of film, runtime approx. 3.20 min at 18 frames per second), my film ended up being approx 2.20min, so I estimate that I will have animated approximately 2,376 frames. Each individual frame was hand coloured or collaged. There is a section in ripples that is a direct reference to Rhayne Vermette’s seminal work Black Rectangle, to honour that Rhayne had been one of my teachers.
I listened to the song “Glitter” by respectfulchild on repeat during the entire process (early in the conception process, I had gained permission to use it as the soundtrack), knowing that this is the music I would pair with the film, and intuitively envisioning the rhythm of the final film in my mind. I stayed in this trance for the two days it took to make the film, using a hair dryer to quicken the process, drying each segment of often thickly placed glitter nail polish(my chosen adhesive).
The original working title for this piece was “honour your gifts” as the message / spell I wanted to pass forward energetically through the work, and in reference to something Rhayne said on a drive home after a workshop she’d just taught, “I just want people to use their gifts.” Over time the title became ripples: what we make lives beyond us. And I held the visual of ripples on water in my mind as I made the film, which is why I focused on having a central “drop” of fluid that rhythmically grows and shrinks be a recurring motif in the film.
Because the nail polish and tiny objects I had stuck to the film were quite thick, there was a high chance it wouldn’t run smoothly through the projector without getting stuck and the film burning or tearing. For this reason, it was the final film screened at the event.
It screened smoothly, as is seen in the video above that I recorded on my phone at the event, and in the weeks afterwards, I got to hear about what people’s responses had been as they watched the film. People didn’t know wtf they were looking at or how I’d done it, but they became very curious. I was blessed enough to hear through the grapevine, some of the impacts the film had had on the young filmmakers that had been in the room that night. The ripple effect. To me, that is the marker of success of this work.
I made ripples to as an example of techniques, and the gaze I made it for was those who hadn’t yet seen something like this, so that they may become inspired and make their own works. I made it as an example for the “students,” to empower them. I did not make it for the gaze of the gatekeepers, or already established and experienced artists, to earn validation and my place amongst them. Nor would I hoard my techniques. I never have worked that way, and I think that working that way is a selfish hinderance to the collective evolution.
The success of my work in this lifetime is that those who come after me will surpass me, and further open the gates of opportunity to those they go on to inspire and empower. This is the Spirit that I was gifted by my teachers and our art ancestors. And so it is.
I do have a digitised version of this film, that I made with an optical printer (screencaps from this version of the film are seen below). Although using the optical printer (which tore the sprocket holes to shit and greatly lowered its life expectancy of being able to actually run through a projector) did open me to new possibilities I could play with in regards to rephotographing film, through this digitisation process, the film gained a very different quality and I feel that it lost some of its magic. I prefer the original version, projected at the precise event it was made for. At that event, the timing of how the music and the images were paired was somewhat up to chance, as the projectionist just had to press “play” on both the audio and visuals at the same time. I felt there was magic in this incorporation of “chance” and how it all culminated in a single, ephemeral moment while we all sat in that room together.
I prioritised ripples to be played via a super8 projector if ever screened. It did screen once more projected via super8 projector, at a film festival in Calgary. Most film fests don’t have this option, and so the digitised version did play two more times locally in Winnipeg. I didn’t otherwise try to distribute it.
In 2025 when I was moving apartments, someone who was helping me move threw the film into the dumpster, and alas it was lost. Though, it was lost in Winnipeg… so who knows if someone may have dumpster dived and retrieved it and if one day the film may resurface somehow. From my experience, things in Winnipeg seem to have a hard time just dying and being resolved, something in the energy there prompts drawn out haunting rather than a clear cut, clarifying and freeing end.
I do have a video recording I made as a teaching exercise, and in it I show the film as an object and what each section looked like in my hands. I’m glad I recorded that. When I have time, I’ll edit it and share it here. Maybe along with the digitised version of the film. These recordings remind me to record my work before it is gone, either into the dumpster, or just as these memories I recount now, dissolve out of my head.
Losing this work that is so important to me, relieved me in a way, because it made me feel like, if I lost this thing that is so important, then so many other things of much less importance may as well go too. Although obviously I think it was a mistake that this work was lost and I can’t now show the physical film to people as a teaching example at workshops etc, the loss of it helped me to not be so attached to things in general. The finality of the physical work being lost to me, prompted a fresh motivation in me to ponder what work I would do next, as if energetically, space had opened up for something new to be born. Plus, clearly, I believe in some kind of divinity, so I must have faith that it was all meant to be this way. Maybe the whole story, and the way I choose to tell it, is a part of this work.
The object is not the artwork. The object had done its job. The artwork (the art’s work) is what lives beyond me.
— katnancy, 6 October, 2026
