The Diamond Eye Assembly
Explore the rituals of an all-female Slavic community as a dark force begins interfering. To maintain harmony and protect their traditions, the womenfolk wage war on the witch.
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Amalie AtkinsDirector
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Amalie AtkinsWriter
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Evgenia MikhaylovaKey Cast"Mother of the Twins"
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Hailey & Hannah PappKey Cast"Twins Daughters"
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Monique BlomKey Cast"Krankenschwester"
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Agatha BockKey Cast"Grandmother"
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Emelie BerlandaKey Cast"Grandmother's Sister"
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Neil Greening, EditorLEAD CREW
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Max Greening, Sound DesignLEAD CREW
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Genres:Art Film
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Runtime:25 minutes 16 seconds
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Completion Date:January 31, 2020
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Production Budget:25,000 USD
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Country of Origin:Canada
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Country of Filming:Canada
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Language:German, Ukrainian
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Shooting Format:16mm
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Aspect Ratio:1.37:1
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Canada
Amalie Atkins lives and works in Saskatoon. As a multidisciplinary artist noted for her films and video installations she creates cinematic fables through a blend of film, performance, textiles, installations, and photography. She has exhibited nationally including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Central Art Garage, Gallery 44, The Ottawa Art Gallery, La Centrale, FADO, Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine, and internationally in New York City, Vienna, Queensland, Tasmania, London, and Berlin. Her work was included in major survey exhibitions, most notably, Oh, Canada at the MASS MoCA; DreamLand: Textiles in the Canadian Landscape at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto; and Road Show East, which toured Eastern Europe. Atkins is the recipient of the Locale Art Award for western Canada (2011) and long-listed for the Sobey Art Award (2012, 2013). Her photographs have appeared on the covers of Canadian Art Magazine, Visual Arts News, Grain Magazine, CV2, and in MUZE magazine (Paris). Her exhibition we live on the edge of disaster and imagine we are in a musical toured from the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; College Art Galleries, Saskatoon. Where the hour floats, a solo exhibition was selected for Capture Photo Fest at Evergreen Art Gallery, Coquitlam (2019). The Remai Modern premiered her most expansive film project to date, a trilogy of films The Diamond Eye Assembly, Transvection, and Requiem for Wind and Water reviewed in the September 2019 issue of ARTFORUM.
A map of strange landmarks – Disappearing Island, Witch’s Cave and Krydor: Village of Abandoned Churches – introduces viewers to the hallucinatory world of Saskatchewan. Presented in an old-world order where woman are leaders, everything in this world is done by women. The characters move between dream-like worlds intertwining folklore and fiction.
My Mennonite heritage, rich in stories, was the source of the vivid visions in this film. All the costumes were handmade sewn by me in my Saskatoon studio. The film was shot in the luminous prairie landscape on a super 16 mm film camera, giving the film the look of an unknown past. Miriam Toews, a Canadian Mennonite novelist has greatly inspired my postmodern Mennonite style of filmmaking and storytelling. The cast are people close to me, my aunts, my sister, good friends, non-actors in the Saskatoon community which include a group of roller-skating women, multiple pairs of twin sisters, and a large group of Ukrainian dancers.
The film was funded through a Canada Council for the Arts grant, a Saskatchewan Arts Board grant, with equipment provided by the Saskatchewan Film Pool and Paved Arts.