OIL WELLS : STURGEON ROAD & 97TH STREET

by Christina BATTLE

2002 / 16 mm / coul / son / 3' 00

Watch the online video
This film has been digitized with the support of the Ministry of Culture, during the 2010 digitization plan. The total length of the film is available online. The full movie is viewable in our documentation center.

highlighting the repetitive nature of oil wells in northern alberta, this hand processed film documents a sighting common to the canadian prairies.

Christina Battle's Oil Wells: Sturgeon Road & 97th Street (2003) hand-manipulates 16mm footage of oil fields on the Canadian prairies, simultaneously managing to recall Cécile FONTAINE's delicacy of emulsion-layering technique, pay visual homage to Pat O'Neill's early 7362 (1967), and evoke with marvellous understatement the grand prize at the heart of the imperialist resource wars. [senses of cinema “Been Underground So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me: New York Underground Film Festival 2004” - report by Ioannis Mookas (review of programme: ‘patriot games’ – nyuff 2004)]

Shot in the artist’s home province in Alberta, the mechanical rising and falling of an oil well is subject to a suite of rephotography applications (recoloured, superimposed, speed changes). Views of far and near are juxtaposed. Theme and variations, not with a piano, but an oil derrick on a prairie field, rising and falling. [Mike Hoolboom, 2007]

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION

distribution format	16 mm 1 reel (30 meters)
original format	16 mm
speed	24 ips
screen	1,37 - standard
sound	opt Stéréo
rental fee	35,00 €