Air, Fire, Water, Earth: The Films of Jaimz Asmundson
Curated by Cecilia Araneda, for the WNDX Festival of Moving Image
Wed Oct 1 at 7 PM at the Gas Station Theatre (Winnipeg, Canada)
Tickets $15

Screening followed by a Q&A with Karen Asmundson and C. Graham Asmundson

More information: https://wndx.org/2025-asmundson-retrospective/

Jaimz Asmundson (1981-2024), the filmmaker, was unexpected. Named “Winnipeg’s enfant terrible of transgressive cinema” by Victoria’s legendary Antimatter festival for his commitment to works that were campy and subversive, the artist and filmmaker also built a practice centred on mediating personal relationships. The personal was always present for Asmundson. Even in his earlier works there is the deep and continued participation and collaboration of his family and close friends, and also his pets. This presence not only hints at the artist he would evolve into, but also how he would emerge as one of Winnipeg’s most important cultural workers in the media arts, for community was always central to him.

The son of artists, Asmundson was particularly influenced by his father C. Graham Asmundson’s trajectory. Graham described his working process to his son from early childhood as being a “conduit for an unseen magical force,” and this left a deep impression on the child Asmundson was at the time and the artist he would eventually become as an adult. In this way, transgressive art was handed down to Asmundson like a family business – but this served only as a starting point.

In 2006, several years after he emerged as an artist at age 18 with the iconic 1999 film Attack of the 50 Foot Chihuahuas From Outer Space!, Asmundson’s filmmaking practice would be transformed by the WNDX One Take Super-8 Event. The Event, which restricts the filmmaking process in a dogme-like manner to impose super-8 home movie aesthetics and which does not permit post-production editing, emerged in the mid to late aughts as the most influential production incubators of its kind in Winnipeg. Asmundson would develop a special affinity for it. Works created for the One Take, often co-directed by his wife Karen Asmundson or starting her as a main performer, include Drawing Genesis (2006), SLEEP (2008), Goths! On the Bus! (2010), and Citizens Against Basswood (2012). Goths! On the Bus! would additionally feature a musical collaboration between Jaimz and Karen that would hint at their professional music duo project, Ghost Twin, to come in future years.

The two major works that Asmundson worked towards throughout his career were The Magus (2011), a portrait of his artist father C. Graham Asmundson that emerged from the process of making Drawing Genesis; and Echoes (2015), an act of memory processing in response to the death of Asmundson’s mother, poet Carol Barton, from cancer a few years prior.

Much like the Qabalistic correspondences Asmundson was known to evoke in his creation process, the film works of Jaimz Asmundson ultimately cast a connection between the earthly world and the divine, and what giveth and what taketh away.

Program duration: 85 mins

• Attack of the 50 Foot Chihuahuas From Outer Space! (8:20 mins, 1999)
• Carpet Cleaners (25:49 mins, 2002)
• The Phantom of the Cinematheque (3:24 mins, 2008)
• SLEEP (1:13 mins, 2008)
• Goths! One the Bus! (3:20 mins, 2010)
• Citizens Against Basswood (3:23 mins, 2011)
• Kanashibara (11:11 mins, 2007)
• Plastic Heart (4:50 mins, 2017)
• ephemeros (2:35 mins, 2009)
• Drawing Genesis (3:01, 2006)
• The Magus (12:00 mins, 2011)
• Echoes (6:00 mins, 2015)