The Power Plant

Jonathan Schwartz is a young American experimental filmmaker who has crafted a body of short, lyrical 16mm films over the past decade. Working with the legacies of anthropological and observational non-fiction cinema, Schwartz makes the camera a catalyst for a transformed dynamic between the figure behind the camera and those in front. Turning his camera on the people and places around him, Schwartz captures jewel-like fragments of gesture, light and colour that he then meticulously assembles alongside sounds collected as field recordings, creating films of great beauty and feeling.

Co-presented with TIFF’s The Free Screen series, this program includes three films made between 2008 and 2011 that exemplify Schwartz’s exacting vision, bookended by his 33 1/3 Series and the Canadian premiere of his new film If the War Continues. Schwartz will be present at the screening.

Jonathan Schwartz lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, and has worked as assistant professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire since 2009. His films have screened internationally at venues ranging from TIFF, the New York Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and The Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston.

Film Listings

33 1/3 Series: Side A (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2005–10, 14 min., 16mm)
Nothing Is Over Nothing (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2008, 16 min., 16mm)
Happy Birthday (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2010, 10 min., 16mm)
A Preface to Red (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2011, 6 min., 16mm)
33 1/3 Series: Side B (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2006–10, 15 min., 16mm)
If the War Continues (Jonathan Schwartz, USA 2012, 5 min., 16mm)

Photo: Jonathan Schwartz, still from Happy Birthday, 2010. Courtesy the artist.

Co-presented with