Welcome to my party!

While many artists can't wait to flee for more cosmopolitan surroundings, or create work to slip seamlessly into international art currents, Amalie Atkins' films are refreshingly homey.

Stride's little screening room hosts a retrospective of her work that traces her love for with using the medium of Super-8 film to tell stories about her family and prairie lineage through eight of her short films. Her aesthetic is implicitly local, where the images of roller rinks, mini postwar bungalows and wide open spaces are both familiar and elevated by Amalie's sense of wonder for these environs.

The Tooth Maker is a crackly black and white Super-8 charmer with chaplinesque polka music. The pacing of the narrative and glowing contrasts of white snow and dark winter garments reminds of the Saddest Music in the World by Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin.

In Shoot the Duck, local artist Alexis Findlay stars as a pink-clad rollerskater with a fantasy about the slickest tricks. She receives a pretty fly looking pair of skates by mail-order (Sears catalogue, no doubt) and heads for some misadventures at the roller rink. Atkins' collaboration with other artists and family members continues in Bike Ballet, where the artist and her sister bust out some truly fabulous acrobatic moves while careening through Montreal atop their bikes. Must be seen to be believed.

Sassy Syncronized Swimmers is where we see Atkins collaborative method of working in all its glory. A cast of 6 artists perform an underwater routine at the Banff hot-springs while famed cultural theorist Jeanne Randolph narrates this 1920s fantasy. A throwback to the early days of the National Park's history, the swimmers are clad in vintage swimsuits and earnestly perform. Randolph's wry impersonation of an olympic sportscaster goes delightfully over the top with descriptions of the team as "queens of the world" is especially hilarious given Randolph's ouvre of ficto-critical art writing and her preoccupations with cultures of sport.

Amalie Atkins is currently in residence at the Banff Centre, where I chatted with her about prairie snacks, her newest film starring her Mennonite aunt, and making films with friends and family.

Shotgun-Review: Do you think there is such thing as a prairie aesthetic?

Amalie Atkins: I can see how someone might think that about my work, because it is based on the open spaces, with less cityscapes. Bike Ballet was the only film that was shot in an urban situation, but it is still responding to empty spaces within an urban environment. If there isn't space, you cannot create something within that space.

The film that I am working on right now was really affected by living on the prairies, by living in Saskatoon. It's all about one character who is living in isolated landscapes, and there are lots of images of snow and the sky.

I don't know if it is prairie or Canadian, but winter is a huge theme for me. As an artist, you can just go under, be subterannean by just being in the studio or puttering around.
That's where the winter is important, having all that time to work. Mental space and time without all the distractions that you might have if you lived in a big city like Montreal. It's important to get out of the small city too.

SR: The newest work in the exhibition is a film portrait of your Mennonite Aunt?

Atkins: She is a crazy lady, and I really wanted to make a film with her and about her. Russian Sugar Beans is about my relationship with her, but also about her relationship with the world. She lives half a year in the city and half on the farm.

She's really obsessed with gathering fruits - this year a picked over 100 barrels of Saskatoon berries - and she has this competition with herself, she basically picks all the fruit and gives it away. She has connections to the raspberry, strawberry and saskatoon berry farmers and she goes in after the season and picks what is left. After growing up in poverty, the counterbalance is her gathering, so that nothing goes to waste. There are another few films that can happen with her.

SR: How does this collaborative storytelling approach influence your work?

Atkins: My work is so much about home, and a lot of art making is about being outside of the home. Like artwork referencing artwork, but that's not what I am doing - making artwork that is close to me, about family, where Paul (my husband) is doing the soundtrack. (My films are) not about a phenomenon that's way outside of my reality.