Private Project

Sneck-Rise

When cars attack, Snow, Cold, and Winter Fun must team up and fight back before urban sprawl swallows them up and overheats winter to end it forever!

  • Adam Bentley
    Director
    Shea, by NASRA; Hila
  • Janita Frantsi
    Key Cast
    "Snow"
    One With
  • Alexis McKenna
    Key Cast
    "Winter Fun"
  • Maxwell Hanic
    Key Cast
    "Cold"
  • Ursula Kelly
    Cinematographer/Editor
  • Janita Frantsi
    Choreographer
  • Gareth Gilliland
    Composer
  • Sandra Rojas
    Production Design
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    3,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Reeling: Dance on Film 2023
    Edmonton
    Canada
    July 15, 2023
    World Premiere
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • YEGFilm
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Adam Bentley

Adam Bentley, the face of #yegfilm, is an Amiskwaciwâskahikan (ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ ) (Edmonton)-based screenwriter, filmmaker, and founder of the International Festival of Winter Cinema. He produces video works on anxiety and distance in an era of climate breakdown and isolation. His works have been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council, Calgary Arts Development, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Edmonton Heritage Council. He was also short-listed for Telefilm Canada's Talent to Watch program. His works have been screened at film festivals across Canada, and on every continent except Antarctica. His work has also been featured on Air Canada and CBC Television. When not writing or filming, he can be found biking, summer or winter, in Edmonton’s river valley.

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Director Statement

Our streets unequally devote much too much space to cars in summer and even more in winter! Car tracks through snow show as much as half the width of space meant for cars is not actually used. This space could be opened up to pedestrians, winter cyclists, other outdoor activities like snowshoeing and cross country skiing, and people with mobility difficulties. This unused road space is called a “sneckdown”, the road’s “snowy neck-down”.

Sneckdowns are temporary curb extensions caused by snowfall, where snow has built up in the road but not been flattened by traffic, effectively opening public space. Sneckdowns reveal points where a street could be usefully narrowed to slow motor vehicle speeds and open up more spaces to pedestrians. Exposing sneckdowns is a form of radical tactical urbanism laying obviously bare how much space cities have surrendered to cars over the last century.

I have been interested to deeply explore that space that could and should be opened up to people on public roads, and am collaborating with Edmonton Finnish dancer Janita Frantsi to choreograph and produce “Sneck-Rise”, a 5 minute musical dance video that takes back that space for people, even if for just a moment, with a visual interplay between cinema, snowy surfaces, and human movement.

Reactionaries want people to ignore the climate emergency by hiding indoors and mindlessly consuming; while this film confronts climate emergency head on by showing how much space we have surrendered to cars that are overheating our planet.