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Joyce Wieland is one of the most important Canadian artists and filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century, but her work has not been showcased in its entirety in New York City for many years. Anthology aims to redress that oversight with this comprehensive retrospective, which brings together virtually all of her pioneering short and feature films.
Wieland began making films in Toronto in the 1950s at the animation studio, Graphic Associates, which had been co-founded by George Dunning, and where she worked alongside other artists including the young Michael Snow. Wieland and Snow soon married and moved to New York City in 1962, becoming integral parts of the experimental film and art scenes of the time, and producing some of the key filmic works of the era, such as Snow’s NEW YORK EYE AND EAR CONTROL (1964), WAVELENGTH (1967), and <---> (BACK AND FORTH) (1969), and Wieland’s CAT FOOD (1967), RAT LIFE AND DIET IN NORTH AMERICA (1968), and REASON OVER PASSION (1969).
Her sojourn in the U.S. awakened a deep sense of Canadian national identity, and following her split with Snow and her return to Canada in 1971, this became increasingly reflected in her work, culminating in films like PIERRE VALLIÈRES (1972) and her ambitious narrative feature, THE FAR SHORE (1976). The negative reception afforded that last film brought her cinematic career largely to a close (though she did collaborate with Hollis Frampton in 1984 on A AND B IN ONTARIO, and in 1986 completed a film she had shot earlier, BIRDS AT SUNRISE). She remained prolific and widely celebrated as an artist, however – working largely in the realms of collage, assemblage, and quilt-making – until her death in 1998.