National Network for Equitable Library Service

The very first collection celebrating her work, Exovede in the Darkroom is a series of responses, critical and poetic, to Métis experimental filmmaker Rhayne Vermette's visually explosive and materially intimate practice. It was while studying architecture that Vermette, primarily self-taught, fell into image making and storytelling. Her films are opulent collages of fiction, animation, documentary, reenactments, and divine interruption. Invoking Vermette's two central influences--Louis Riel's "exovede" as outsider, and Carlo Mollino's "darkroom" as the psychic site of secluded experiment--the collection explores Vermette's powerful shorts that engage a number of 16mm collage practices, as well as her astounding feature film Ste. Anne, a work that mesmerized the film world internationally with the visually resplendent story of a return. Contributors include Jennifer Smith, Claudia Sicondolfo, Suzanne Morrissette, Joshua Minsoo Kim, José Sarmiento Hinojosa, Sky Hopinka, Gwynne Fulton, Janet Blatter, Lawrence Bird, Irene Bindi, and Stephen Broomer