Isaac Forsland

Isaac creates highly collaborative analogue films that lean closer to the world of experimental. Drawn to the tactile and versatile nature of celluloid, his films are thematically tied to the process of filmmaking itself. His approach incorporates techniques like eco-developing, direct animation, and film burying.

He's an active member of artist-run collectives including MULCH Collective and XINEMA. Through MULCH, he contributes to collaborative, land-based projects that emphasize sustainability and shared labour. Through XINEMA, an experimental film lab in Vancouver, he supports accessible analogue filmmaking through workshops and public programming, and is involved in operating the Fieldhouse Darkroom, a community film lab granted through the City of Vancouver’s Park Board, with a focus on education and skill sharing.

Isaac began his Tilt residency by crowdsourcing ideas to guide the direction of his artistic output. Following a group discussion with hcma staff, he planned, created, and assembled five experimental shorts, culminating in a final screening called Spectral Strata.

He hosted several workshops and activities with hcma-ers along the way, including a bike tour exploring instances of abandoned architecture around Vancouver.

Sediment Loop (Edmonton)

This process-heavy film combined several filmmaking processes to consider time and the lifecycle of a building. As a test run for the later Sediment Loop (North Vancouver), clear 16mm leader was installed at an active construction site to allow dust and environmental residue to settle onto its surface. The location, the construction site of Beaver Hills House Park behind hcma’s Edmonton office, was also captured on 16mm film. The clear leader and developed footage was used in a process called ‘contact printing’ to create a double-exposure onto a final print copy for a looped film projection.

Rot Garden

Using hcma architectural models (and office views) as subjects, participants learned to use a 16mm Bolex camera and subsequently buried the developed film. Both shot and buried at hcma’s Vancouver office, the lightly decayed film explores transformation through perspective and time.

Ghostly Spaces

Over the course of a month, a Super 8 camera rotated between 16 hcma participants, each recording a Vancouver site marked by absence, memory, or loss. Two guiding questions were the parameters: ‘what building or location do you miss most in Vancouver’, and, ‘is there a building that holds a ghostly memory — one that you revisit whenever you pass by?’ Once developed, the film was placed in the office, where staff added colour directly onto the celluloid, recalling spaces that no longer exist. The work emerges as a collective portrait of Vancouver’s architecture, shaped by shared acts of remembering.

Afterlives of Infrastructure

This project explored inactive, obsolete, or residual infrastructure in Vancouver, from English Bay’s Haywood Bandstand to the sealed-off Burrard Bridge stairwell. Biking to six different locations, hcma-ers documented these forgotten or repurposed systems to highlight the loss of civic memory in an ever-changing city. The film also features fragments from a conversation with local Vancouver historian John Atkin.

Sediment Loop (North Vancouver)

As done with the first film, this project followed the dust-capture, filming, developing, contact printing, and loopmaking process. Focused on the Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre in North Vancouver—at the time an active hcma construction site—the creation of the work involved hcma staff and resulted in multiple film loops rather than one. The film includes a musical score from Steve DiPasquale (Director of Design at hcma) and Matthew Corlett.