Caligari Project

THE CALIGARI PROJECT 

(Temporary page, website under construction)

The art of Expressionism, better known as German Expressionism, has asserted itself aesthetically and culturally since the early nineteen-hundreds as the foremost artistic style of modern and and post- modern times, affecting profoundly all art forms – visual arts, literature, music, theatre, and certainly film. Contrary to the representational panache of its predecessors, Expressionism is the style that most imperatively interrogates the materialistic view of the visible world and exposes it as false passivity. Under the influence of Kantian ideas that the mind makes the world, of Nietzschean pessimism and Existentialist doubts, as well as that of the rapid developments in analytic psychology and psychoanalysis, Expressionist artists have turned inwards, privileging the Subjective over the Objective, and Feelings over Reason. For them to create is not merely a question to reproduce nature, but to react to the visible in a uniquely personalized fashion. (Dr. Christine Stojanova, 2015)

The Caligari Project is currently envisioned as an interdisciplinary festival, presented in Regina, October November 2016 celebrating and exploring German Expressionism in its many forms, both historical and contemporary, It will include the following:
● Film festival: Expressionist Shorts
● Screening of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari with a newly composed live score
● A Film series of historical Expressionist films coupled with contemporary films inspired by the movement, programmed over the months leading up to the festival
● A Stage performance of “Spring’s Awakening” , a presentation with Artistic Director Kenn McLeod of the 1910 play by Frank Wedekind in the German Expressionist style,
● Expressionism in Dance in the German Expressionist style
● Gallery exhibition: Expressionist Prints and Posters in the German Expressionist genre
● Expressionism in Contemporary Art: an exhibition of local and contemporary artwork inspired by German Expressionism,