Calgary 2008, 3:30 min, Dir: Christopher Markowsky
This music video of singer-songwriter Donna Kay’s I Am looks at the urban landscape through the eyes of an Aboriginal photographer played by Kay herself. She uses an old-fashioned camera, which underscores the inability of technology to accurately represent eternal and ineffable things, such as nature, or the land itself. Meanwhile, a recurring drum song suggests to us that the First Nations lived in closer communion with these things than we do in our office towers of glass, steel and concrete. When images of First Nations dancers begin to appear superimposed on pop-up cityscapes, construction sites and sidewalks, we’re forced to consider that civilizations, including our own, can come and go while the land and the spirit of those that live and have lived close to it - ghosts from the past, bodies in the present, and the progeny of the future – endure from breath to breath.
Christopher Markowsky was born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He attended the Alberta College of Art in Calgary and Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario where he studied filmmaking. Christopher worked for ten years in the film and television industry across Canada as a set dresser until 2004. In 2005, he produced his first short, the acclaimed comedy The Milk Crate Recovery Team. His other works include The Lifer (2009), Press the Button: A Documentary on the Youth Animation Project (2008), Postmark (2008) and Round Round Round (2006). His third project with songwriter Donna Kay, By the Water, is currently in production. Christopher lives in Calgary, Alberta.