THUNDER BAY - A small film festival that began on Bay Street 14 years ago as a way of highlighting local filmmakers, is embracing its new name, its new location, and its new take on celebrating local artists.
The Vox Popular Media Arts Festival, formally known as the Bay Street Film Festival, opens this weekend and promises to showcase dozens of films and performances across a wide spectrum of mediums and genres.
“We are not just a film festival anymore,” said Marcus Agombar, festival coordinator. “We have taken more of a media arts approach. This year we have a lot more happening. Rather than just the film, we have performance art, music, art installations, a 360 Oculus Rift headset you can wear, we have a couple of performers here from Germany. We have a lot of exciting stuff happening.”
The film festival made the change from Bay Street last year and is now located on Park Avenue at Trinity Hall. The transition to Vox Popular has been exciting, Agombar said, and it looks like fans of film and the arts have followed the festival down the street.
“We have received a lot of positive feedback to having a lot of the other things included,” Agombar said. “A lot of people are excited that there is more media arts because Thunder Bay has such a rich arts community.”
But the films remain at the heart of the Vox Popular Media Arts Festival. This year there are 60 films to be screened over three days, including a large selection of works by local filmmakers such as Damien Gilbert, Erin Collins, Keegan Richard, Martin King, Nathan Hatton, and Jon Wesselink.
Works by filmmakers from the across the world will also be screened, including films from Pakistan, France, Iran, the United States, Toronto, and the Yukon.
Carl and Daniel von Rüdiger from Germany will be performing during this year's Vox Popular Media Arts Festival. “A lot of people come just for the films but experience all these other things as well, or people who come for the other things but get to experience the films as well,” he said. “So there is a really good two way relationship.”
“I’ve seen the different arts and performances happening in Thunder Bay and the area,” Agombar continued. “I don’t think a lot of people have the same opportunity to see it all or have an event focused on it.”
One of the performances taking place on the Friday at the Urban Abbey, a partner location during the festival, is 0101, a group from Germany made up of Daniel von Rüdiger and Carl, who will be performing live music to a social documentary film about life in Papa New Guinea.
Using drums and looping guitars and bass, the duo create a unique cinematic postrock experience through both the images on the screen and the sound on the stage.
“It’s really an audio/visual life experience journey to Papa New Guinea,” von Rüdiger said. “It’s like musical visualization.”
Von Rüdiger and Carl will also be leading one of the master class workshops on Friday about musical visualizations. Riaz Mehmood will be leading another workshop on Friday entitled Music Creation by Chucking Sound.
Coming from a small city in Germany, von Rüdiger said he and Carl were very happy to be invited to participate in the Vox Popular Festival, and the people living in a city with what he said is the coolest name on earth, are very lucky to have this kind of opportunity.
“I think the festival is doing a great job at mixing, on the one hand you have this film program, but you have this artistic approach to handling video,” he said. “Especially for a smaller community, it is really interesting.”
The Vox Popular Media Arts Festival will be held from Sept. 13 to 16, with film screenings taking place at Trinity Hall and art installations and performances taking place at Urban Abby. For more information and to see a full schedule, visit the Vox Popular Media Arts Festival website.
