"The Magus" Wins At I Festival Lume de Cinema (Brazil)

Winnipeg filmmaker Jaimz Asmundson‘s quasi-documentary portrait of his artist father C. Graham Asmundson, The Magus, has won an Artistic Contribution award for International Short Film at the I Festival Lume de Cinema, which was held on July 15-23 in Sao Luis, Brazil.

The 12-minute film ostensibly documents the artistic process of the elder Asmundson, as he descends far underneath the city streets into a hidden studio. Safely ensconced in his private retreat, the artist begins dramatically painting abstract images onto enormous canvases while the audiences slowly begins to understand that they are watching a magic ritual.

As the film’s pace begins to race furiously, the paintings explode across the screen, revealing hidden worlds in their midst.

Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film reviewed the movie earlier this year, saying:

Film as Satanic ritual has never really evolved into a full-fledged subgenre even with the still continuing interest in the work of Kenneth Anger. But, every once in awhile, one will come across a great underground movie that treads heavily in the dark arts.
Jaimz Asmundson‘s The Magus is one of those films.

Via @ Badlit

"The Magus" Original Score - Available for Download

The original score for the short film "The Magus", composed by by Jeremy Pillipow, is now available for download as a digital release.

"The Magus" screens at the Lume International Film Festival

"The Magus" will have it's international premiere at the first annual Lume International Film Festival, which runs July 15 to 23, 2011 in São Luís, Brazil and is run by Lume Filmes.

The film is part of the Short Film Competition and will screen before the feature WHITE AS SNOW (Selim Gunes | Turkey) with the short film, THE FOAL (Josh Tanner | Australia) on Wednesday, July 20 at 9pm.

"The Magus" screens at Fantasia

"The Magus" has been selected to screen at the 15th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs July 14 - August 7, 2011. It will play as part of the "Celluloid Experiments" program on Saturday, July 23 @ 2:15pm at the J.A. de Sève Cinema.

From the Fantasia website:

Every year since 2006, Fantasia has devoted a programming block to audacious, boundary-breaking short films. Allow yourself to be overwhelmed by this fever dream that defies traditional cinematic laws of time and narrative structure. See the sounds, hear the images! It’s like a symphony of the imagination. We’ve assembled for you over 20 singular works that together make up a voyage to the heart of the mind’s eye, a dreamlike mélange of tones and colours. Though CELLULOID EXPERIMENTS has always reserved an important place for international films, this year’s edition is dominated by a selection of creators from Quebec and Canada.

Direct from Spain comes Kote Camacho’s LA GRAN CARRERA, in which a documentarian revisits a morbid incident at the Lasarte Hippodrome in 1914. American Ben Ridgway returns with the world premiere of his bewitching animated short TRIBOLUMINESCENCE. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski offer L'ANNÉE DE L'OR, a delirious creation accompanied by the music of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Syl Disjonk presents a work in progress, the nightmarish ETHEREAL CHRYSALIS, which already earned a Special Jury Prize at the most recent edition of Vitesse Lumière. Richard Vézina shares a slice of eternity with the world premiere of MEMENTO MORI. Andrew Milne experiments in 35mm with PHANTASM, a Quebec premiere. Among the NFB’s newest gems is LES JOURNAUX DE LIPSETT by Theodore Ushev. Masterful! Jaimz Asmundson captures a visual performance impeccably with THE MAGUS, a Montreal premiere. Rhayne Vermette breaks apart all the eye captures in R SEYMORE GOES NORTH, a Montreal premiere. Fans of Burton Cummings and the Guess Who will love the hilarious NEGATIVIPEG, a poetic recreation of an awful event, by Matthew Rankin. As we do each year, we’ve reserved time for the finest moments of Dérapage, an event of audio-visual exploration founded by the students of UQÀM’s graphic design department. This year we’ve selected the intriguing CATS by Jocelyn Leduc, the architectural vision of foulmalade.org’s OHM, the apocalyptic ÉLÉMENTS by SIM Éric Mc Guire et the reverie THE PAGE’S WING by Federico Campanale. A must! TIND (this is not design), a well-known Montreal collective, present BLITZ and NORD’EST. From the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema come Emma Michelle Owen with INSIDE A FORT MADE OF SHEETS, Jenni Tannahill with JUMP, Tina Nawrocky’s DESERTED, Yoshino Aoki’s THE DOOR, and David Martineau Lachance and Chelsea Owen, each directing a double shot with L'AUTOPORTRAIT/PYROMANTEIA and MOTEL/BEAR AND THE CAPTAIN. And finally, Lawrence Côté-Collins knows what buttons to push with FUCK THAT.

—Marc Lamothe (translated by Rupert Bottenberg)

Here is a trailer of the program, featuring clips from "The Magus":