Rick Raxlen

Raxlen considers himself an artist who uses film, rather than a filmmaker, whatever that means. Picasso said “It takes a long time to become young.” So Raxlen guesses he’s young now. Rick worked at the NFB when Lipsett, MacLaren and Larkin were there, taught at Concordia, and won one of only two Genies ever awarded to Best Experimental Film (then called Canadian Film Awards) for an image-processed West Coast Native legend about face-changing called “Legend.” His short avant-garde work has been on five of the last six Ann Arbor tours; he recently sold eight 16mm prints to the Western Archive at the Pacific Cinematheque, and has screened work in the National Gallery, Cinematheque Quebecois, Cinematheque Ontario, etc. Raxlen’s first feature “Horses in Winter” was named “one of the best films of the eighties” by the Cinematheque Quebecois; Claude Jutra fell asleep beside Rick at the Cinematheque Quebecois one time years ago. Despite these claims to fame, Raxlen is virtually unknown outside of Victoria and Montreal. Check out his website at www.raxpix.com. “Gifted independent film artist Rick Raxlen makes infectious, engaging and highly amusing postmodern shorts that are winningly and whimsically perched between animated, underground and experimental forms… Raxlen’s works combine found materials, original animation, multiple animation methods, structuralist techniques, Dadaist text, and absurdist humour.” – Alex Mackenzie, The Blinding Light!! Cinema