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A B O U T
Brett Kashmere is a Pittsburgh-based filmmaker, curator, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, USA.
His work combines traditional research methods with hybrid interfaces,
handmade equipment, and materialist aesthetics. Through intricate experimental documentaries and unadorned camera movies, Kashmere explores
the intersection of history and (counter-) memory, geographies of identity, and the politics of representation. His films, videos and scholarship
have been presented at festivals, conferences and venues internationally and used in university curricula. The film scholar Thomas Waugh writes that
Kashmere’s essay-film Valery’s Ankle, about the contradiction of hockey violence and Canadian identity,
“may well give momentum (and integrity) to the discourses
of sports, masculinity, and nationalism in Canadian cinemas.”
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N E W S
An article I co-wrote with Astria Suparak about Canadian live cinema practices is now available on my
website here.
It will also be published in forthcoming volume, Cinematograph 7: Live Cinema, edited by Thomas Beard.
I'm currently writing an essay about Garine Torossian's collage film Sparklehorse for an anthology on Torossian's work being produced
by the Canadian Film Institute.
"Counter-Archive," the second issue of INCITE! Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics
is in production and should be available in May 2010. Watch for upcoming launch parties in Oberlin, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere.
Also, Valery's Ankle will soon be available for online viewing via the Hot Docs Doc Library.
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JayceLand.com on Valery's Ankle
 Monday I got to see the fall's first show of The Emerging Filmmakers Series at The Little [Theatre, Rochester, NY]. Although I was impressed all around with some great short films, the one that stood out was Valery's Ankle by Brett Kashmere. It was a fascinating exploration of the violence in hockey as a metaphor for the Canadian collective subconscious. Especially the notion that Canadians, while being polite and kind on the surface, are repressing a terribly violent inner turmoil. He cites a specific turning point when Canadians feared they might lose their identity as the supreme hockey players of the world during The Summit Series in 1972 between Canada and Russia. As the Canadians had failed to sweep the series, Kashmere focuses his attention on Game 6 (of 8) when Canadian Bobby Clarke deliberately slashes the ankle of star Russian player Valery Kharlamov with his hockey stick, fracturing his ankle and generally removing him from play in the remaining games. The press largely ignored this as the reason for Canada's ultimate success, but Kashmere feels a twinge of shame that the game wasn't played cleanly — and further, that the game has become commercialized and is never played by kids on a pond, unstructured, just for fun. It's a brilliant essay on the subject and compellingly uses editing and experimental techniques to amplify his point.
http://jayceland.com/LunchNStuff/Archives/2007927.html
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Monday I got to see the fall's first show of The Emerging Filmmakers Series at The Little [Theatre, Rochester, NY]. Although I was impressed all around with some great short films, the one that stood out was Valery's Ankle by Brett Kashmere. It was a fascinating exploration of the violence in hockey as a metaphor for the Canadian collective subconscious. Especially the notion that Canadians, while being polite and kind on the surface, are repressing a terribly violent inner turmoil. He cites a specific turning point when Canadians feared they might lose their identity as the supreme hockey players of the world during The Summit Series in 1972 between Canada and Russia. As the Canadians had failed to sweep the series, Kashmere focuses his attention on Game 6 (of 8) when Canadian Bobby Clarke deliberately slashes the ankle of star Russian player Valery Kharlamov with his hockey stick, fracturing his ankle and generally removing him from play in the remaining games. The press largely ignored this as the reason for Canada's ultimate success, but Kashmere feels a twinge of shame that the game wasn't played cleanly — and further, that the game has become commercialized and is never played by kids on a pond, unstructured, just for fun. It's a brilliant essay on the subject and compellingly uses editing and experimental techniques to amplify his point.
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