Mentorship

Multidisciplinary artist, Alexis Bellavance works within time. His findings, sometimes loud, sometimes silent, are concrete observations of his surroundings. Cycles, positions, laws, echoes, materials, become the segments of conceptual scaffoldings that leads to multiple disciplines: audio art, performance, installation, photography. The consequences of his work are empirical results emerging from his attention to reality and certain of its accidents.

He is co-founder of the Montreal based performance event VIVA! Art action, an active member of the art center Perte de Signal and a board member of Centre des arts actuels Skol.

Alexis Bellavance’s work has been presented in numerous events, festivals, galleries and artist-run centres in North America, Europe and Asia. He lives in Montreal, CA.

Nathalie Bujold joined the l’Oeil de Poisson collective when it was founded in 1985. In 1992, she completed a Bachelor’s degree at Université Laval and was awarded the Prix René-Richard. In 2016, she obtained a Master’s degree in visual and media arts from UQAM. The same year, her work was exhibited at Vidéochroniques, Marseille. Monograph programs of her single-channel videos have been presented at GIV, Vidéographe, Heure Exquise! and Pleasure Dome. In 2008, she was awarded the Prix de la création artistique by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for her video Les trains où vont les choses. Her work has been presented in Canada at Stride and AKA as well as in numerous places across Quebec, notably the Cinémathèque québécoise, the Musée national de beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ), and the festivals AKOUSMA, Phos, FIMAV, FIFA and Percéides.

Pier-Philippe Chevigny is a director, screenwriter and editor from Montreal, Quebec. He has worked on a wide variety of projects including music videos, documentaries, television shows and commercial spots. His fiction films focus on sociopolitical themes such as immigration and social justice. For the past few years, his short films such as Tala, Vétérane, or more recently Recrue, launched in 2019 in competition at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, have earned him international attention. Pier-Philippe is currently working on the development of two projects of feature-length film.

Line Katcho is a Montreal composer and audio-visual artist who is meticulous, rigorous and passionate. Primarily interested in sound and image as demonstrations of kinetic matter, gestures, forces or motion, she distinguishes herself by her experimental approach and affinity for perceptual games.

A Master’s Graduate with Honours in Electroacoustic Composition from the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, and AEC graduate in commercial photography from Dawson College, she leans towards a mixing of styles, genres and applied methods. Her empirical approach aims at creating a cathartic, holistic experience, expressed furthermore in her performances by her authentic nature.

Her internationally acclaimed work has been presented at festivals such as MUTEK (MTL, AR, MX, ES), MA / IN Matera INtermedia, Currents new media, Espace [IM] MEDIA, Elektra and Akousma; she was awarded the first prize in the 2014 electroacoustic competition Jeux de Temps/Times Play and the Award of Distinction in the audio-visual category at the MA/IN 2016 Festival. Line Katcho actively collaborates with choreographer and dancer James Viveiros, the Paysage Primitif collective, and also performs as a VJ under the moniker La Hyèna.

Simon Gaudreau’s movies are characterized by an incarnated point of view, directed on singular characters. From these characters, generally evolving in micro-societies, emerge the social and political dimensions inherent to his cinema. His feature-length documentary King of the l’Est was selected at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in 2010. Gagnon, his first short fiction film, was presented at the Rendez-vous du cinéma Québécois in February 2014. His second documentary, Fucké, was presented to the FNC, FIFEQ, RVCQ and FCIAT in 2014-2015. Minoritaires is his most recent film.

Éléonore Goldberg is a French-Canadian animation filmmaker, author and cartoonist. Born in France, she now lives in Quebec. After studying in Visual Arts, she turned to animation cinema and obtained a master’s degree in Fine Arts at Concordia University. As an animator, she has collaborated on several feature films (documentary, fiction and animation). Éléonore also directed the short films Errance (2014), Mon yiddish papi (2017) and La saison des hibiscus (2020) which received the Iris Prize in 2021 for Best animated short film. She illustrated the graphic novel La Demoiselle en blanc (2016, Éditions Mécanique générale) and wrote the novel Maisons fauves (2019, Éditions Triptyque). Éléonore has also been teaching drawing, animation and illustration since 2013.

 

Holder of a master’s degree in contemporary music and sound in cinema, Bruno Pucella has more than twenty years of experience in sound design and sound recording. In 2020, he won best sound in the documentary category for the film Istanbul echoes by Giulia Frati, for which he also signed the original score. Although film remains his main creative space, he regularly contributes to projects for the performing arts, media arts and virtual reality. As a filmmaker, he has scripted and directed a documentary as well as three short films, the last of which, Davaï, was presented at a dozen international festivals. He is currently finishing a documentary on sculptor Lisette Lemieux funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre brings a new approach to animation and documentary filmmaking by blurring the lines between the two genres. Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre’s animated documentary work shows new approaches in nonfiction storytelling, blurring the lines between documentary and drama.

The award-winning director and film animator has directed several animated documentary films including Post-Partum , McLaren’s Negatives , Passages , The Sapporo Project , Female , JUTRA and Flocons.

Saint-Pierre’s work has claimed international attention being shown in over 150 film festivals as well as international recognition winning many Awards including two Jutra awards.She has been featured in books, magazines as well as on television. Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre founded MJSTP Films, an animation and documentary production company in 2004. She has lectured on the art of the animated documentary filmmaking in Europe, Asia and in Canada. She has also been a jury member for many events such as Arts Council, Film Festivals and Nominating Comitees.

In 2008, she was selected as the international artist in residency for the S-AIR Inter-cross Creative Center in Sapporo, Japan.

Experimental filmmaker, video artist and independant curator, Guillaume Vallée graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Film Animation and MFA in Studio Arts – Film Production option. He’s interested in alternative forms of moving images in analogue forms as a way of considering the direct interaction between different mediums. His work is an exploration of materiality within the creative process. In attempts of creating a more complex relationship with his subject matter, Vallée makes use of cross-medium forms that range from camera-less techniques to optical effects, glitch, video feedback, resulting in expended & hybrid pieces. He works mainly on Super8, 16mm and VHS.

 

Vallée is questionning the notions of recycling & reappropriation, treating all material as found footage within a collaborative practice, in film, video & performance. His audiovisual performances  have been shown in various festivals in Canada, USA, France, Italy and Japan and his experimental films and videos, distributed by Vidéographe and Winnipeg Film Group, have been screened internationnaly.

 

His work has been awarded in 2013, for The Yellow Ghost (Grand Prix Dérapage), in 2016 at the WNDX festival (Festival of Moving Image) for his short film, Le bulbe tragique (” Best Canadian Work ”) and il fait gris dans ta tête, tout à coup, a videopoem codirected with Sarah Seené, as part of Festival de Poésie de Montréal (Grand Prix Video-Poésie 2018).

 

Vallée is an instructor and gives workshops on experimental cinema and video art in various artist-run centres. His workshops include hand-processing film, contact printing, painting and scratch on film and analog glitch. He has given several artist talks internationally, at La Maison du Québec in Saint-Malo (France), at the Space Cell Lab (South Korea), at filmkoop wien (Austria), just to name a few and also locally, including at the University of Montreal, at Concordia University and as part of the Journées de la Culture.

 

Guillaume Vallée was artist in residence at La Bande Vidéo (Canada) in 2017, at Le Fresnoy – national studio of contemporary arts (France) and at Signal Culture (United States) in 2018. In 2020, he was able to carry out three artist residencies : at Studio 303 (Canada), for the creation of pas d’apparat corps, an experimental videodance in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Calla Durose-Moya and musicians Pulsatilla & Hazy Montagne Mystique, at Main Film (Canada), as part of the Film Factory program, in which he created his latest 16mm experimental short film Monsieur Jean-Claude and at the Visual Alchemy studio (Canada) with Al Razutis, for learning stereoscopic video (3D).

 

 

Nelson Henricks was born in Bow Island, Alberta and graduated from the Alberta College of Art. He moved to Montréal in 1991 and received a BFA from Concordia University. He recently completed a PhD at Université du Québec à Montréal. Henricks has taught art history and studio art at Concordia University, McGill University, UQAM and Université de Montréal. His writings have been published in exhibition catalogues, magazines, and in several anthologies. A curator and artist, Henricks is best known for his videotapes and video installations, which have been exhibited worldwide. A focus on his video work was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the Video Viewpoints series in 2000. Henricks was the recipient of the Bell Canada Award in Video Art in 2002 and the Prix Giverny Capital in 2015. A mid-career retrospective of his work was presented at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery in Montréal in 2010. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and others. He is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto.