In a personal account of four landmark Canadian experimental filmmakers, Jim Shedden will briefly describe the experience of seeing each of these films in his teens and how that experience blew open his sense of what cinema could do and what audiences could experience. He will also discuss the recently published Moments of Perception, which provides a history and critical framework for understanding Canadian experimental film, while also arguing that the tradition is an international one with porous borders. In the book, the term experimental reflects heterogenous approaches to cinema: sometimes magical, sensual, intellectual, emotive moving-image works that are engaged with political, personal, medium-reflexive, and philosophical themes.

On Thursday, November 10, San Francisco Cinematheque is hosting Moments of Perception: Random Canadian Moments, with Jim Shedden presenting a different selection of films, at Shapeshifters Cinema.