New York, Toronto, Berlin, Copenhagen, Victoria, Osnabrück, Winnipeg, Barcelona, Bremen, Karlsruhe, Valencia, Frankfurt, Mexico City, Prague, Edmonton, Rotterdam, Durham/Owen Sound, Vancouver, Ottawa, Amsterdam, Manchester, Montréal, Jakarta, Grey County, London ON, Tabor, Paris, Hamburg, Jihlava, Calgary, Washington, Rome, Vilnius, Klaipeda, Tucson, Rome, Madrid, Melbourne, Chicago, Gimli, Heidelberg, Düsseldorf, Utica, Manila, Ann Arbor, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Poughkeepsie, NY
Films for Free
As of June, 2011, the bulk of the Trains of Winnipeg film cycle is available for free in HD, through this site. This includes: 18,000 Dead in Gordon Head; Trains of Winnipeg (the title short film); Hitler! (Revisited); The Jew & the Irishman; F-Movie; Love in the White City; and Nanaimo Station.
The Auteurs + Garage
A round table hosted by The Auteurs and Garage, discussing Trains of Winnipeg - 14 Film Poems, is taking place between December 9 and 23, 2009.
Participants include: Chris Gehman (filmmaker, writer, former Toronto International Film Festival "Wavelengths" programmer, and former Artistic Director of Images Festival, i.e. the first Trains of Winnipeg programmer); Brenda Longfellow (filmmaker, writer, film theorist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Film at York University); Dave Barber (Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque programmer for over 25 years); Michael Sicinski (Houston-based teacher and writer in Cinema Scope Magazine, indiewire.com, Cineaste Magazine, and Cargo Magazine); Jason Anderson (novelist and film critic in Eye Weekly, artforum.com, Globe & Mail, Village Voice, and Cinema Scope Magazine); Alex Rogalski (Toronto International Film Festival programmer, and founder of the Take One Super 8 traveling film project); Tobias Morgan (Paris-based film director, and producer of The Auteurs' Garage project engine); Alley Pezanoski-Browne (Palo Alto-based film producer, and Editor of The Auteurs' Scratchpad on-line magazine); and Clive.
Trains of Winnipeg - 14 Film Poems is now available for viewing everywhere on The Auteurs, and the first 500 viewings are FREE.
Video Samples, E-Book, & CD, FREE
Several Trains of Winnipeg video excerpts (including the full-length version of 18,000 Dead in Gordon Head), the full CD + all the film soundtracks as mp3s, and the full book in .pdf form (cover and inside), are now on-line.
Current project: Utopia Suite
The Summer, 2006, launch of Clive Holden's multi-year, multi-disciplinary art project, Utopia Suite, was presented as part of Toronto's Images Festival on April 15 at Camera Bar, and on June 11 in Amsterdam at the Holland Festival co-hosted by the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
These events included a multimedia artist's talk, the premiere screening of two new 'live cinema' works, and an interactive audience-artist discussion.
Lucky Seven
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems has been included in Eye Weekly's Top Ten Films of 2005 (#7). Read all the reviews here.
Train to Copenhagen
November, 2005: Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems has won the 'New Vision Prize' at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival 2005.
"'Trains of Winnipeg', film and poetry in a unique synthesis, is the perfect example of how the best instances of formalism can be consistent with the emotional mode of expression. The documentary is made up of fourteen, short, poetic films that can be enjoyed individually or as fragments of a larger work. Different types of visual materials are used in each episode; found footage, home video, and hand painted celluloid. The film destroys the view that poetry, music, fine arts and film are separate art forms. In one of the short chapters, the director, Clive Holden, says, after a meeting with his mentally ill brother, that we fear madness because we believe that it is contagious, and he continues, but our lives are populated with false opposites like love and hate, madness and normality. He exhibits this conservatism by integrating the documentary form with autobiographies, experimental film, media and sound art, modern poetry, indie music and the avant-garde. This is a must for everyone with a love for poetic film." – CPH:DOX.
International Film Festival Rotterdam
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS was an official selection of the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January, 2005.
ToW Distribution:
For film or video exhibition information, see our contact page to reach the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre in Toronto, and the Experimentalfilm Workshop in Osnabrück.
Take the Amtrak to Penn Station...
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems screened at the Anthology Film Archives in New York on February 21 and 22, 2007. It was a co-presentation with Images Festival.
World Premiere at Images Festival
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS premiered at Images Festival in Toronto on April 17th, 2004.
Copenhagen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe + Bremen
In June & July, 2006, Clive Holden presented Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems at the Danish Film Institute & the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen, as well as at Berlin's Kino Arsenal, Frankfurt's Deutsches Filmmuseum, Kinemathek Karlsruhe, and Bremen's Kino 46.
The Other Victoria Station...
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems screened on November 24, 2006, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. It was part of the opening night of their Urbanite Friday night event series.
Mexico, City of Posters, Murals + Film
Trains of Winnipeg, the title film from the feature-length cycle, screened on November 1, 2006, at the ninth annual Bienal Internacional del Cartel en México at the Centro Cultural el Agora, Mexico City. It was part of a selection of Canadian experimental films entitled Cine Frágil un Cuarto Oscuro, programmed by Solomon Nagler,
Article in Poolside
Clive Holden's pictorial essay Mind the Gap – An Artist’s Response to Completing a Film/Video Cycle is in this year's Poolside, an annual publication of the Video Pool Media Arts Centre. It was launched June 30, 2005, and the e-version is available for download here (.pdf, 2.7 MB, turn to page 19).
Terminal City
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems screened in Vancouver's Pacific Cinematheque in on May 31 & June 1, 2006.
Vlaky z Winnipegu
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems premiered in Prague at the newly refurbished Cinema Svetozoron on June 12, 2006.
transmediale.05
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS was an official selection of transmediale.05 in Berlin in February, 2005.
Trains in Camera
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS enjoyed a near-sold out run in March, 2005, at Toronto's new CAMERA Café Bar and Media Gallery. (Held Over for additional screenings!)
EMAF in Osnabrück
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screened at the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück on April 21, 2005, at the Cinema Arthouse and on April 24 at the Lagerhalle: Visual Poetry – Ein visuell opulenter, fast hypnotisch wirkender Spielfilm. Ein episches Werk, dessen fühlbarer Zusammenhalt in der cleveren Auswahl der Bilder(-geschichten) liegt. Die 14 rezitierten Gedichte behalten dabei ihre eigene Autonomie, da sie die Bilder nicht untertiteln oder interpretieren.
Victoria Screenings/Artist's Talk
In Victoria, B.C., a pair of events were co-presented by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and MediaNet media artists co-op: two TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screenings at Cinecenta Cinema (UVIC) on July 21, 2005, followed by a multimedia artist's talk by Clive Holden presented by the Art Gallery on July 27, 2005, .
Utica Station
Clive presented Trains of Winnipeg - 14 Film Poems at Hamilton College in Utica, NY, on October 9, 2005, as part of the Fall 2005 F.I.L.M. (Forum for Image and Language in Motion) Sunday Series programmed by Scott MacDonald, author of the Critical Cinema book series:
"Canadian Poet/Filmmaker Clive Holden will present one of this past year’s most remarkable feature films and that rare, successful attempt to blend poetry and cinema. Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems is the final part of Holden’s “Trains of Winnipeg” project, which began with a website, followed by an audio CD (2001), then by a book of poems (2002) and finally by the feature film."
DVD Launch + Artist's Talk @ aceartinc
The official Trains of Winnipeg DVD launch party took place at aceartinc, 290 McDermot Avenue, 2nd Floor, Winnipeg, on September 29, 2005, featuring a multimedia artist's talk by Clive Holden entitled Sleeping Together – Intermedia Art Making, Process + Subtext.
Just in: Love @ the Drive In
Love in the White City, part of the Trains of Winnipeg - 14 Film Poems film cycle, screened in the great outdoors at the Hanover Drive In in August, 2006, as part of Durham Art Gallery's Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film in Gray County, Ontario (it really is fabulous).
Calgary FF
Trains of Winnipeg - 14 Film Poems was an official selection of the Calgary International Film Festival 2005.
U.K. Premiere in Manchester
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS was an official selection of the Commonwealth Film Festival in Manchester, screening on May 5th, 2005:
Artist, writer and filmmaker Clive Holden presents his uniquely Canadian vision in the form of 14 short depictions of suburban and urban dystopias. He explores his relationship with his schizophrenic brother, his anti-war stance, the suburbs of his childhood and the alienating, complex cities of his adult life. This cycle of films – made in a variety of formats using home movies, found footage and re-processed film - is accompanied by spoken monologues and a striking soundtrack.
Music plays a key role in this fascinating experiment in film and poetry. The rhythmic repetition of images, the entrancing score and the hypnotic delivery of the spoken words create an entirely new, hybrid viewing experience. Both experimental in form and epic in scope, personal in content and universal in theme, Trains of Winnipeg is totally unlike anything you’ve ever seen at the multiplex.
Kosmo Barcelona Literatura
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems screened as part of the Kosmopolis Festa Internacional de la Literatura, presented by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona between October 18 and 22, 2006 .
To the Capital!
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems screened in Ottawa on October 19, 2006, as part of the Canadian Film Institute's Café Ex Series presented in collaboration with SAW Video Co-op at Club SAW. Clive also gave a master class, also at Club SAW.
Czech Rail
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems was an official selection of the International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava 2005.
Paris, Düsseldorf, Rome
Hitler! (revisited), part of the TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS cycle, screened at the International Festival Signes de Nuit in Paris, April 29-30, 2005, at the Cinéma du Panthéon.It also screened as part of a Signes de Nuit touring selection at the Filmmuseum in Düsseldorf on April 9, 2005, and at the Goethe Institute in Rome on April 30, 2005.
ToW @ Hanover Drive In / Talk @ Durham Art Gallery
Hitler! (revisited), part of the TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS cycle, screened outdoors at the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film in August, 2005 (Hanover & Owen Sound Drive Ins). This was accompanied by a multimedia artist's talk by Clive Holden entitled 'Sleeping Together – Intermedia Art Making, Process + Subtext', about the making of the film/video cycle and related art project at the Durham Art Gallery. Love in the White City, also part of the ToW cycle, screened at the Durham Town Hall as part of a program of 'works of poetry on film using the language of cinema'.
Sydney Opera House
Hitler! (revisited), part of the TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS cycle, screened at Sydney's d/Art/2006 media arts festival on April 13, 2006, as part of the festival's Imports program. d/Art/2006 is held in the Sydney Opera House's Studio.
Tucson
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screened in Tucson as part of the Arizona Film Festival on April 17, 2005. Clive also gave two visiting artist lectures at the University of Arizona.
Sponsored By The Jack And Vivian Hanson Arizona Film Institute. The Tucson Cinema Foundation in partnership with the Tucson Poetry Festival and the UA Poetry Center, is proud to present Clive Holden’s Trains of Winnipeg -14 Film Poems, a landmark of independent cinema and a considerable poetic accomplishment. Holden’s poems are presented vocally and textually in combination with visuals of considerable variety and dexterity, organized so as to complement and expand the implications of the poems. By the end of the film’s 88 minutes, viewers have experienced a lifetime of resonant personal experiences and emotions. Trains of Winnipeg is that rare experimental film that can command the 35mm screen and communicate with general audiences. Holden has been involved with the Trains of Winnipeg project for several years, producing, first, a book of poems, then a CD, and most recently the film, which premiered at the Images Festival in Toronto. – Scott MacDonald, author of the Critical Cinema book series.
Concordia U., Montreal
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screened at Concordia University as part of its Visiting Artist Program on March 8, 2005.
Hamburg Screenings
Trains of Winnipeg, the title work from the TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS film/video cycle, screened at the Short Film Festival Hamburg 2005.
Foreign Matter Tour 2004/2005
18,000 Dead in Gordon Head, part of TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS, is included in the latest Foreign Matter: Short Films from the Canadian Underground, which so far has toured to: Manila, Philippines, Eksperimento Film Festival; Merida, Mexico, Geografias Suaves; Oaxaca, Mexico, Geografias Suaves; Mexicali, Mexico, VideoFest 2K4; Ensenada, Mexico, VideoFest 2K4; Tijuana, Mexico, VideoFest; and Guadalajara, Mexico, Chroma Festival de Arte Audiovisual.
Trains at Camera Opening Party
In December, 2004, TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screened at the grand opening party of Toronto's new CAMERA Café Bar and Media Gallery.
Big Muddy
Love in the White City and Bus North to Thompson With Les at the Wheel, two selections from TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS, screened at the Big Muddy Film Festival on March 1, 2005.
Winnipeg Premiere @ Send + Receive
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS had its Winnipeg premiere screenings at the Cinematheque from Oct. 21-23, 2004, as part of: Send + Receive - a Festival of Sound 2004. Watch for T.O.W. at an international film or media arts festival or gallery near you throughout 2004/2005. (DVD release T.B.A.)
Trains for FREE
Now that the Trains of Winnipeg CD has been available for a couple of years, we've decided to give it away for free. Also new to the site is the complete soundtrack from the title film in the feature-length cycle.
Antimatter Underground
On Sept. 23, 2004, TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS screened at the Antimatter Underground Film Festival 2004/Cinecenta Cinema in Victoria, B.C.
Trains of Spain
TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS toured Spain in July, 2004. Venues included Madrid's historic La Filmoteca Espanola, La Casa de America, and the L'Institut Valencia de Cinematografia. Trenes de Winnipeg - 14 Cine-Poemas:
"Procedente del oeste, como un tren repleto de carga, el film está colmado de recuerdos y meditaciones sobre las experiencias nómadas de Clive Holden, de un lado a otro de Canadá. Sus evocadores cortometrajes y textos están engarzados para otorgar el tono de un himno a estas exquisitas piezas, concebidas como un film de largometraje, que explora los sentimientos de transitoriedad, pérdida y anhelo de un lugar al cual llamar hogar."
Robert Flaherty Film Seminar
On June 19, 2004, TRAINS OF WINNIPEG - 14 FILM POEMS closed the 50th annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar held at Vassar College, Poughkeepise, New York, guest curator: Susan Oxtoby, curator of the Pacific Film Archive in the Berkeley Art Museum.
Gare de Montréal
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems was an official selection of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art in Montréal in March, 2006, at the Goethe-Institut.
London Canadian
Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems was an official selection of the London Canadian Film Festival in London, Ontario, in March, 2006.
18,000 Screenings From Ann Arbor to Melbourne
18,000 DEAD IN GORDON HEAD, part of TRAINS OF WINNIPEG – 14 FILM POEMS, screened in August, 2004, at the Hanover and the Owen Sound Drive-ins as part of the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film:Programmer Phil Hoffman: 'In the summer of 1982, during a visit to his hometown, Clive Holden witnessed the murder of a teenage girl - killed by a sniper on a quiet, suburban street. He returned a year later to lie with his camera on the spot where she died, and to roam the neighbourhood and revisit the tragic site. His film, 18,000 Dead at Gordon Head, juxtaposes Holden's angst-ridden voiceover with spiralling neighbourhood images, manipulated and conjured, in offering to the dead girl.' 18,000 DEAD IN GORDON HEAD has also been exhibited at the following festivals & venues: . the Ann Arbor Film Festival
. the European Media Art Festival
. Winnipeg's NSI Filmexchange
. the Melbourne International Film Festival
. le Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand
. the Chicago Underground Film Festival
. Victoria's Antimatter Festival of Underground Short Film & Video
. Rome's Noir IN Festival
. toronto's Worldwide Short Film Festival
. the BRNO 16
. Victoria's Cinecenta
. Peterborough's Optic Nerve Moving Media Festival
. Vancouver's Pacific Cinematheque
. the Annapolis Reel Cinema Festival
. Manila's eKsperim[E]nto Film + Video Festival
Book Now in Germany
Trains of Winnipeg, the book, is now available in Germany in both soft and hardcover via amazon.de.
The Common Sky
Clive has a poem in THE COMMON SKY - CANADIAN WRITERS AGAINST THE WAR, which was recently launched in Toronto. Buy it direct from Three Squares Press. Profits go to the Canadian Peace Alliance.
'A visually stunning piece of protest poetry'
NEIGHBOURS WALK SOFTLY was screened at the Gimli Film Festival on August 1, 2003.
Reading/Screening in Heidelberg
On April 30th, 2003, Clive performed at the Deutsch-Amerikanische Institut's 'Night of the Poets' in Heidelberg, where he also screened four of his film-poems: NANAIMO STATION, ACTIVE PASS, UNBREAKABLE BONES, and NEIGHBOURS WALK SOFTLY.
Trains of Australia
Last year's TRAINS OF WINNIPEG feature presentation (including seven tracks from the CD) on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's program, POETICA, was re-broadcast on March 15, 2003.
Vancouver's Blinding Light
NEIGHBOURS WALK SOFTLY screened at Vancouver's Blinding Light Cinema on March 15, 2003, as part of a curated show from from the vaults of the Winnipeg Film Group and Video Pool.
Poesiefestival Berlin
NEIGHBOURS WALK SOFTLY was a finalist at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Awards in July, 2002, which is part of the Poesiefestival Berlin, an international poetry festival held each summer and culminating in a huge outdoor gathering in the Potsdamer Platz. Clive attended.
Kunstradio, Vienna
trains of winnipeg on Kunstradio, ORF, Vienna: Das ausgangsmaterial von "Grain Train" sind aufnahmen von zuggerƒuschen in winnipeg und ein gedicht von Clive Holden. "Grain Train" ist teil des vielschichtigen projektes "Trains of Winnipeg".. gedicht, stimme + train field recordings: Clive Holden
. musik + klavier: Christine Fellows
. gitarre: John K. Samson
. bearbeitete kurzwellenradiosounds: Steve Bates
Number 1 With a Bullet Train
Many thanks to CKUW in Winnipeg, where Trains of Winnipeg (the CD) reached number 1, and to CIUT in Toronto (top ten), and CJSF Radio, Vancouver, (number 6, top 20 for two months).
Winnipeg Writers Festival
Clive appeared at the Winnipeg Writers Festival in September, 2002, with Christine Fellows and Stephen Carrol.
