"REM" - Vintage surrealist film 1976, 16mm VHS relic (Stephen Bowlsby)
Channel: Stephen X. Arthur
Date: 2021-04-03

A surrealist dream...

Inside a burnt-out church, rain spatters on the balcony, burnt-out rafters arch above, and the floor sags below. The stain-glass window to the side is an advertisement for travel on a salvation spaceship to the planet Artin Seven... 

Timing the Difference Between Good and Bad: The clown conducts a chemistry experiment on a balloon dog...

Operating on a hotdog: the Surgeon's Assistant is also the Master of Ceremonies... 

The dreamer awakes and finds a parking meter in his bedroom. 

Made while a full-time science student at the University of British Columbia in 1976. Film stock financed by a $1000 inheritance from grandmother Bowlsby, and using equipment available during an elective arts course in film production.

Awarded First prize (post-secondary) and "Best of Show" in the 8th Annual British Columbia Student Film Festival, 1976.

Dreamer: Dave Noga. Professor: Dr. Meyer Bloom (Physics UBC). Clown: Rob Weber. Murderer: Gerry Pokroy. Magician's Assistant: Leslie Clough. Friend at start: Jeff Jones. Music and vocals: Bruce Jennings.

ARTIST STATEMENT (2000)

"The transformations of context and visual/spatial relationships seen in Transfigured (1998) and Vision Point (1999) are characteristic of my work, from my early animated films and experimental live-action films of the 1970s to my digital experimental bitmap animation of the 1990s. For example, the scenes of the half-hour surrealist film, REM (1976), are linked by the kind of scene transitions pioneered by avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren in At Land (1944). The experimental film Splitstream (1978) uses a horizontally split screen to simulate two synchronized views of the same scene: a moving POV camera and a stationary wide shot, both framing the same action simultaneously.  Look Twice (1980) repeats a single dramatic event with different visual approaches to convey two very different interpretations of the protagonist's emotions and motivation. Likewise, the computer-animated film The Recess (1995) uses an unexpected shift in visual perception and context to address the issue of personal identity. Even my commercial feature screenplays partake of this transformational perspective, including a serial killer's allergy that becomes synonymous with pollution and nuclear proliferation (Critical Mass, 1983); a cult deprogrammer who gathers followers for a fake cult (Placebo, 1979); and a man who discovers self-loathing when he meets the younger clones of himself (Take Two '82 and The Catalyst '83). 

“A related fascination is metamorphosis. As an undergraduate student in biology, my focus was on comparative morphology through time, as revealed in studies of macroevolution and developmental biology. The ultimate realization of this fascination is seen in Earth Moves, developed for the NFBC 1998-2000, where I was finally able to unite science and art."

-- Stephen Arthur (ne Stephen Arthur Bowlsby), 2000