Spectres of Shortwave (2016)

Spectres of Shortwave (Canada, 2016) 116 min color DIR-DOP: Amanda Dawn Christie.

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For decades, thirteen Radio Canada shortwave towers sat in the marshes of Sackville, New Brunswick. A byproduct was that audio waves emanated in people’s nearby homes – even if they didn’t have the radio playing! Foreign voices from abroad that were picked up by the towers would be heard echoing from people’s sinks, refrigerators and pipes! Moncton native Amanda Dawn Christie’s film works on several levels: it documents the destruction of the radio towers, with interviews of Sackville residents talking about the audio transmissions, including shots of home interiors while the ghostly audio emanates from within. It is also a rare instance where a film screening can be a multimedia event, as oftentimes when Spectres of Shortwave was shown publicly, the audio of the film would be simulcast on shortwave radio, as it was on the night that it was shown in Toronto at Jackman Hall, as part of the ongoing Vertical Screenings series, curated by Jesse Cumming.

This project, several years in the making, became an accidental record of the past, in form and content: this document of the towers’ final legacy was recorded on a medium which was rendered obsolete. Because 35mm film and motion picture equipment were plummeting in value, as the industry would favour the new digital technology, Ms. Christie found it more economically feasible to purchase a new 35mm camera outright, instead of renting one.

Although the film runs a little long, its long single takes of towers and home interiors recall the portraiture of James Benning. This unique experience could also have been a living ghost story for some of the Toronto regulars who attend independent, experimental films. Many of these familiar faces would attend the free screenings of avant-garde films held for six weeks on Wednesday nights in the spring and fall at this very location during the 1990s and 2000s, while Cinematheque Ontario was still held at Jackman Hall, located at the east entrance of the Art Gallery of Ontario. (Coincidentally, this film screened on a Wednesday.) Once Cinematheque was absorbed by TIFF, and programming had moved to its new Bell Lightbox facility down on King Street, Jackman Hall remained dormant, except for rare events like this. In more ways than one, we were haunted by ghosts.