Flick Harrison
Chief Chretien strategist Warren Kinsella called Flick "unfair" and "offensive." He's done community / activist / political film, video, documentary, installation and theatre work for over 10 years, starting as a videographer on the national CBC series Road Movies, and going on to work with 536 Arts Collective, Western Theatre Conspiracy, DanceArts Vancouver, Headlines Theatre, and Impudence Cultural Productions. In this time he's videographed two features (Reg Harkema's "Better Off in Bed" and Katherine Surridge's "Tideline"), and shot video for R.E.M. (I'll Take the Rain), Bruce Sweeney, Nettie Wild, David Vaisbord, James Dunnison, and many others.
He studied at Z Media Institute with Noam Chomsky, as part of the Canada-Council funded interactive DVD project Marie Tyrell, based on a 1974 short story by D.M. Fraser, starring Tom Scholte (Live Bait, Dirty) and Susan Box (of punk band July 4th Toilet), and Flick's smash-and-grab video "President of the Apes" is lurking around the U.K. in a pedal-powered cinema and at Roadance, the Sundance-baiting cube-van outlaw film fest.
Flick writes the biweekly column Zero for Conduct for Vive Le Canada, the ONLY thing that Google hits for the phrase "political film analysis." His rabble-rousing websites Stockwell Dork and Clarkson the Terrible have stirred national attention, the former getting thousands of hits a day after CBC TV coverage during Election 2000. Flick's videos have shown alongside work by Nick Zedd, Negativland, Seth Tobocman, Mike Holboom, Oliver Hockenhull, Lincoln Clarkes, Christine Taylor, Lola Lush, Hugh Phukovsky, Ivan Cyote, and others, and been seen by millions of viewers in Canada, the United States, and on the internet -- but he continues to avoid the mainstream.
Born in London, Ontario, the son of an air force gynecologist and a psych nurse, the Moose Jaw Times once called Harrison a "modern-day Jack Kerouac." He teaches digital filmmaking to kids at Arts Umbrella and edited the Film and Video section of Broken Pencil, a zine / indie-culture print mag based in Toronto. As a journalist / host he's interviewed Richard Linklater, Guy Maddin, the Royal Art Lodge, Vincenzo Nataly, and many other Canadian and world artists.
Harrison earned a Journalism degree at Carleton U with BORDERTOWN. Shot in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with partner Borys! Kit, the Hi-8 documentary exposed the dangers of Maquiladoras, the Canada-U.S. FTA, and NAFTA. He then moved to UBC to do an MFA in Film Production. His graduate film was Freeworld, about two Canadians drafted into the conquering American army; the UBC MFA Film program turns out films like Live Bait, The Grocer's Wife, Double Happiness, and Kissed.
Harrison directed and edited the 16mm short Tricycle of Violence, produced and directed Testing your Dog's IQ with Dr. Stanley Coren, and made promo videos for David Orchard's Progressive Conservative Party leadership bid.
Harrison edited the film section of Terminal City Weekly in the fall 2001 incarnation and Taxi Vancouver Mag.zine in 1997-8, wrote about film for Capsule magazine, and has written in the Rain, Film Threat, Play, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette, and Adbusters.
www.flickharrison.com
Artist Code: 753
Videography
2004, 24:50 minutes, colour, English