Screening

The Cinematheque and the Contemporary Art Gallery present the Vancouver premiere of Gray House (2017). Poised somewhere between documentary, fiction and gallery installation, the 75 minute experimental feature film is the debut of Austin Lynch (David Lynch’s son) and former Vancouver-based visual artist Matthew Booth. A visual poem told as a five-part meditation on solitude and the American psyche, the film constructs a captivating portrait of America of seemingly unrelated parts. Loosely inspired by the life of American artist and pseudo-hermaphrodite Forrest Bess (1911–77) and his interest in aboriginal rites that sought to unite the masculine and feminine, this provides a cipher to the order in which the film unfolds. Employing the artist’s interest in duality, the film reflects this structurally through a series of opposing juxtapositions — male and female, exterior and interior, day and night, the natural and the constructed, landscape and architecture — and formally by the film’s play between documentary and fiction. With Denis Lavant (Beau travail) and Aurore Clément (Paris, Texas).

Co-presented by the Contemporary Art Gallery and The Cinematheque. Filmmakers will be in attendance and the screening on December 7 will be introduced by CAG Executive Director Nigel Prince.