Films by:
Erika MacPherson / Original music by Christine Fellows and John K. Samson.
Kaoru Ryan Klatt / Original music by Julia Ryckman (Slattern)
Jaimz Asmundson / Sound design by Karen Asmundson
Spawned by her mother’s deathbed tale, Erika MacPherson’s documentary Heimþrá (In Thrall to Home) is a quest through disparate landscapes and unsettling synchronicity. Years before learning of the mystical connection between her family and the river Jölulsá á Brú in Iceland, she unwittingly unleashes a spell when she casts her mother’s ashes into that very raging glacial river. Bewitched, Erika embarks on an archeological dig into the family archives and takes on the onerous task of trawling her mother’s hoard of diaries searching for information about the elusive deathbed tale. Enthralled by mythic tales she is hurtled back to Iceland where, clad in her grandmothers Icelandic costume and seeking to return a family heirloom-turned-talisman to the place of its origin, she incants legions of her grandmothers names across the wind-torn country side. The story unfolds while Erika walks a self-proclaimed pilgrimage route along the boundary of the historic Iceland Reserve in Manitoba, where the transmutation occurs, of Heimþrá into Home.
MTS Stories From Home
Echoes – directed by Jaimz Asmundson Structured around the recollection of a premonitory dream, fragmented memories from the period leading up to the death of the filmmaker’s mother were projected on to natural textures and surfaces, re-photographed, composited and processed until the memories became abstracted representations of the evolution, degradation and disintegration of memory and the physical self.Shot in Iceland in 2011 during núna (now)’s 5th anniversary programming in Reykjavík
Fleeting – A Slattern music video directed by Kaoru Ryan Klatt Slattern’s song and video explore the longing to connect with loved ones who have left this world. Fleeting traces the feelings of exposure and disorientation that accompany great loss. The work is in memory of the musician’s mother, who was an artist. Shot in Iceland in June 2014.