The mission of artifact productions is to initiate creative, high quality documentary projects about unusual topics that will touch their chosen audiences around the world.
Whether in cinema, television, new media and other exhibition spaces, the focus of artifact productions is the use of existing material – be it “reality” or mediations on it – in a creative engagement faithful to, and inspired by, the very subjects/objects explored.
The product: documentary research and production.
The process: experimentations with archives, film, video, sound, words and ready-mades, i.e. old and new media, and with actual life - art if act - art through action.
All while situating itself in the continuum of documentary theory and practice of the past decades, artifact productions is dedicated to independent production within a complex industry in perpetual r/evolution. It also believes in the use of the documentary medium as an investigative process, as well as the importance of opening up rich creative collaborations on a human level.
artifact productions was founded in Montreal by independent filmmaker Caroline Martel. It celebrates its first decade this year, as well as its incorporation.
Over the years, artifact productions has collaborated with some of the best cinema artisans in the industry. Within her company, Martel has produced and directed THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERATOR, an archival film celebrated worldwide as “an enchanting film” (TIME OUT New York), “…the kind of intelligent and dedicated work that will live on for much longer than the flavors of the moment” (Village VOICE). artifact productions has also produced some fifty hours of material used in DERNIER APPEL/HOLD THE LINE, a National Film Board of Canada production (52 minutes, 2001) about the last fight of Bell Canada's telephone operators.
artifact : arte by skill (ablative of art-, ars skill) plus factum.
Something transformed through human intervention.
Modification occurring in the course of
experimentation on the observed object,
through the effect of the method or materia
l employed to conduct the experiment.
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