Evil genius becomes film alchemist

Filmgrafix: The Hallucinatory Shorts of François Miron is underground experimental film at its best. It's a series of eight fantasmo films for anyone willing to brave the dark in exchange for the new light of summer.

Miron began making films in 1982, his work mainly consisting of shorts that use a technique known as optical printing. Aside from gaining underground notoriety around the world, he also produces music videos, photography and short narrative films, as well as providing knowledge to his students at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia. His films were also used as a backdrop for Montreal's Godspeed You Black Emperor! when they opened for Sonic Youth.

Miron is a film alchemist. Only through scientific experimentation and exploration does he manage to use process to transform something ordinary into something of value. The screen reverberates the thought processes and paradoxes of humanity, the explicitness of industry and of the modernist pace. Clips of outdated science imagery share space with fantastic soundtracks that blend seamlessly with the remarkable visuals.

Chock full of films created between 1987 and 2001, Filmgrafix is a 90-minute visual collage of retrospective that combines stunningly vibrant multi-layered imagery and soundscapes, capturing the very essence of Miron's experimental style. His works are seriously infectious.

"The Square Root of Negative Three" ties together the parallels of the psychic with the psychedelic effects of drug use, without the drugs. A voice reiterates: "It means nothing. It means everything," driving one to think of their own circumstantial existence. It's a quirky combination of 1960s found footage that attempts to try and derive meaning from the utterly meaningless.

"The Evil Surprise" opens with a quote by Timothy Leary: "Any reality is an opinion," proving that even anti-narrative film cannot escape the realm of assertion. This also proves that simple science can do no wrong and that it can never cease to create a sense of wonder. Bringing the process of scientific instrumentation to the forefront while rationalizing randomness, this film is as complete as a static head.

Miron's films have been repeatedly shown at festivals around the globe and it is a rare and exciting opportunity to get a chance to see this Montreal native's films in his home city. There is a definite nostalgia for the organic and psychedelic in these films that involve the altering of time perception that filters through brain-wracking genius. The art of visual language is not easily captured, but Miron has got it down pat, one cannot help but be drawn to the intrigue of these films.