Educational Media Reviews Online

Trains of Winnipeg is a collection of 14 experimental film poems—a multimedia collage of Clive Holden’s spoken word and artistic (think “grainy”) images, combined with a minimalist musical score performed by Christine Fellows and the Weakerthans’ Jason Tait and John K. Samson.

The film gets off to a somewhat unsteady start with Love in the White City, a lengthy and repetitious poem featuring shots that Holden took while walking the streets with a small camera in his pocket. Although the premise behind this introductory poem, which took a year to complete, is intriguing—it seems a poor choice to start out the film (I watched this film with a group of poets who all agreed that the poem would be stronger if only…shorter). Luckily the film redeems itself, and regains the attention of the audience, with a variety of quirky, sad, and abstract clips. Holden is not shy about sharing his personal life, and the emotions that his work evokes are memorable. In Hitler! Revisited, he tells of his schizophrenic brother who has spent most of his life in a mental hospital, limited to a vocabulary of only about nine words. My personal favorite is 18,000 Dead in Gordon Head, a poem where Holden uses the sniper death of a 13-year-old Winnipeg girl as material for exploring death and violence in today’s world. Holden’s work is interesting, and the music and images add an extra layer of emotional depth to his words. The film is a great example of what a bit of collaboration between artists can bring forth. At a reasonable cost of $39.95, the film would be a nice addition to libraries supporting media arts and poetics programs.