Nettie Wild

Nettie Wild’s documentary art is driven by her pursuit of cinematic poetry and her appetite to explore new mediums. She has been chasing light all her filmmaking life. And patterns. She captured the repeated action of human behavior in her reknowned documentaries including A PLACE CALLED CHIAPAS (1999) and KONELINE: our land beautiful (2016.) In Uninterrupted (2017) she directed a formidable crew to use digital mapping to turn the Cambie Street Bridge into a canvas of video images portraying the hallucinagenic patterns of migrating salmon. Uninterrupted migrated into Virtual Reality in 2021 and is currently being exhibited in headsets. Nettie then collaborated with fellow filmmaker Scott Smith to create the kaleidoscopic 3 channel video triptych GO FISH (2023) which captures the dizzying patterns of the herring Spawn in the Salish Sea. Working in collaboration with celebrated artists - environmental soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp and pianist Rachel Kyo Iwaasa - Nettie has just finished directing the experimental music video KLAVIERKLANG (2024.) Her current work explores what Nettie refers to as Moving Paintings. Using one single documentary shot, each attempts to “frame the familiar in an unfamiliar way”. The first two of this series are exhibited here: UninterruptedEYES and Guangxi Totem . For Nettie, making documentary art is thrilling, challenging and ultimately a collaborative process. She wishes to acknowledge the colleagues and crews who have worked with her to help realize her work. In particular, her long time producer Betsy Carson with whom she created Canada Wild Productions; Producer Rae Hull who joined Betsy in the monumental task of producing Uninterrupted; and editor Michael Brockington who has been instrumental in creating the past eight of Nettie’s projects. In recognition of her work, Nettie received a Governor General’s Award for Media Arts in 2023.