"The repeated images are such that they appear to be different every time; to be expanding. 1933 has a machine-mechanical-doll-rhythmic-like structure." - Robert Cowan, Take One "1933. The year? The number? The title? Was it (the film) made then? It's a memory! (i.e., a Film). No, it's many memories. It's so sad and funny: the departed, departing people, cars, street! It hurries, it's gone, it's back! It's the only glimpse we have but we can have it again. The film (of 1933?) was made in 1967. You find out, if you didn't already know, how naming tints pure vision." - Michael Snow
1967, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $20
This little sailboat film will sail right through your gate and into your heart.
"SAILBOAT has the simplicity of a child's drawing. A toy-like image of a sailboat sails, without interruption on the water, to the sound of roaring waves, which seem to underline the image to the point of exaggeration, somewhat in the way a child might draw a picture of water and write word-sounds on it to make it as emphatic as possible. ... Joyce Wieland makes a very special kind of film. The same sense of humor, tenderness and feeling for the more humble details of life that is present in her paintings and plastic constructions are given further dimensions in her films. There is somewhat of a sense of sadness and nostalgia in all her work ... a sense of lost innocence." - Robert Cowan, Take One
"The word SAILBOAT is supered over the entire film. It's an innocent static referent for the artist's assisting of passing sailboats. 1933 used naming in another way. This led to her discovery of new possibilities for subtitles, used extraordinarily in RAT LIFE and extended to an even more uncompromising use in the supered meter-like permutations of REASON OVER PASSION. A day at the Beach, at the Sea, at the Sky and at the Sailboats." - Michael Snow
1967, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
"Joyce Wieland's films are among the most endearing ever seen, making her point and sealing the issue in a womanly way without any concern for ragged edges. LA RAISON AVANT LA PASSION is a whirlwind view of Canada with an anti-dialectical premise." - Douglas Pringle, ArtsCanada
"REASON OVER PASSION, then, is Joyce Wieland's major film so far. With its many eccentricities, it is a glyph of her artistic personality; a lyric vision tempered by an aggressive form and a visionary patriotism mixed with ironic self parody. It is a film to be seen many times." - P. Adams Sitney, Film Culture
"This film is about the pain and joy of living in a very large space: in fact, in a continent. It is painful, because such an experience distends the mind, it seems too large for passionate reason to contain. It is joyous, because 'true patriot love,' a reasonable passion, can contain it, after all. But what is remarkable, for me, is that all its urgency is lucidly caught, bound as it were chemically, in the substance of film itself, requiring no exterior argument." - Hollis Frampton
1968-1969, 16mm, color/so, 80m, $135
A film about a Quebec revolutionary who spent three years in jail without trial. The film was made in April, 1972, when Pierre was working with workers, raising consciousness, in Mount Laurier, Quebec. He was then writing a book about Quebec, and he has written the book White Niggers of America about French Canadians.
"PIERRE VALLIERES is one of the most effective political films I've seen. I was helped, when looking at the film, by Joyce's concentration on the words, on the voice. She eliminated all visual distraction, including the speaker's face. It's the voice, the tone of the voice, and the meaning of what is said that comes through. The sincerity and truth of the voice comes through. Ms. Wieland displays in this film the maximum respect for what's being said in it. The purity of her approach, her formal choice, only increases the sharpness of the truth presented in the film.
"I look at this film also as a critique of most of the so-called political documentaries. ... Joyce Wieland concentrates on the speaker's voice, she presents Pierre Valliers' voice in close-up, so that nothing is hidden. And the truth of the voice, the sound of the voice, the nuances of the voice, its vibrations, its colors merge so totally with what is being said that no other images are needed to make the point." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice
Note: In French with English subtitles.
1972, 16mm, color/so, 32.5m, $90
About a strike in which women are involved, but told in a very different way.
1973, 16mm, color/so, 11m, $30