Terra Incognito 1990
I made this film while I was a film student at the University of Regina.
It was heavily influenced by Richard Kerr who taught at the U of R, both by his work and the work of the filmmakers he introduced me to.
The idea was to “process” landscape to the point of abstraction, through double-exposure, frame-rate changes, and re-photographing footage that had been transferred to analogue video, then shot off a monitor. I shot the original footage in the Qu’Appelle Valley, just to the west of Lumsden, Saskatchewan.
Terra Incognito was shot on 16mm colour reversal film, using a Bolex and an Arri S.
The film was edited on a 16mm Steenbeck. After editing for a while, I decided I wanted to finish it on film, which was pretty rare in those days at the U of R; I think Lorene Jewitt was my only classmate who finished a film on film when I was there.
I can’t quite remember the steps, but I’m pretty sure after working with the footage for a while, I had an internegative made from the original reversal footage, then a workprint made from the internegative so I could begin to edit in earnest, then I sent the cutting copy and interneg to a neg cutter, probably in Vancouver. Alpha Cine in Vancouver was likely the lab that made my only print.
The film had its debut in the student section of the 1990 Montreal World Film Festival. I went to Montreal for the festival, and while wandering around the old Expo 67 site, I got an idea for a new film, which was the beginnings of (Stories from) The Land of Cain, which came out in 1995.
I only learned after completing the film that I had butchered the Latin, and the title should properly have been “Terra Incognita”.
Ah well, this was all before the internet when it was harder to find things.
