Jonathan Culp (born March 22, 1971) is a Canadian

underground film An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing. Notable examples include John Waters' ''Pink Flamingos'', David Lynch's ''Eraserhead'', Andy Warhol's ''Blue Movie'', Rosa von Praunheim's ''Tal ...

maker, musician, media artist and writer. They are best known for the features ''Grilled Cheese Sandwich'' and ''Taking Shelter'', and for their work in the genre of found footage collage.

History

Early life

Culp was raised on a farm in Vineland Station, Ontario. Their grandparents (who ran a film distribution company, Carman Educational Associates) worked with and boarded German animation pioneer

Lotte Reiniger Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (2 June 1899 – 19 June 1981) was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Her best known films are ''The Adventures of Prince Achmed'', from 1926, the oldest surviving feature-length a ...

, whom Culp met at age 3, their first exposure to filmmaking. Culp received a degree in

Radio and Television Arts The RTA School of Media is a school within the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University located in the Rogers Communications Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It offers two Bachelor of Arts (Media Production and Sport Media) and a Masters ...

Ryerson University Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU, or Toronto Met), formerly Ryerson University, is a public research university located in Toronto, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District in downtown Toronto, although i ...

. Between semesters they wrote and directed their first short 16mm drama, ''Bark'', featuring friend and former bandmate Ailsa Craig.

Performance art, TVAC and early short videos

While employed as a post-production supervisor at Vision TV, Culp became involved with Symptom Hall, a free-form performance arts space that operated from 1993 to 1998. There they would perform and otherwise contribute to several ambitious ‘happenings’. Culp would produce an audio documentary on Symptom Hall in 2016. In 1996 Culp premiered a 16mm experimental short film, ''Jonathan Culp!'', at The Cameron House, Toronto, during a CD release party for their punk band Loogan Bin. Culp formed the Toronto Video Activist Collective (TVAC) with a number of other leftist videographers in 1997. TVAC documented street protests for several years and produced the ''VideoActive'' compilation video series on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

. The

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) was an anti-poverty group in Ontario, Canada, which promoted the interests of the poor and homeless. The group used publicity-generating direct action techniques such as squatting and demonstrations w ...

’s direct action protests became the subject of several short documentaries by Culp between 1999 and 2005. In 1998, while hitch-hiking across Canada, Culp attended Victoria’s Antimatter Festival to premiere ''Chew It, Somalia!'' - a found-footage

collage film Collage film is a style of film created by juxtaposing Found footage (appropriation), found footage from disparate sources (archival footage, excerpts from other films, newsreels, home movies, etc.). The term has also been applied to the physical ...

made from 16mm films bought at a library sale. Culp went on to work predominantly in the collage style, authoring many films and videos most notably the feature-length ''Taking Shelter''.

Longer films and recent work

Grilled Cheese Sandwich (2005)

Culp’s first feature was shot on video in 2003 with a budget of $12,000. Largely cast with local teens, it satirized Culp’s experiences in the social justice movement, within an unflattering portrait of fictionalized small town Grimsville, ON.

It Can Happen Here (2006)

A 47 minute ‘anti-documentary’ essay on the themes of art, activism and madness. The project grew out of an exploration of the Weyburn Mental Hospital, where Culp's great-grandfather Russell Carman had been incarcerated from 1936 to 1962.

Taking Shelter (2014)

An ambitious feature-length collage project, seven years in the making. Culp crafts a new narrative from clips of over 400 Canadian feature films produced between 1970 and 1989.

Music

Alongside film and video work, Culp has contributed songwriting, vocals and guitar to rock bands The Suck Trumpets, Loogan Bin, The Biters and Broken Puppy. They have also played guitar in Toronto ensembles Tomboyfriend and Opera Arcana (featuring

Fifth Column A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize ...

’s G. B. Jones.) Culp cowrote (with

Bob Wiseman Robert Neil Wiseman (born 1962) is a film composer, songwriter, author and music teacher. Wiseman discovered or produced many artists including Ron Sexsmith, The Lowest of the Low, Bruce McCulloch of Kids in the Hall, Anhai, and former Canadia ...

and Chris Mills) the original songs for their feature ''Grilled Cheese Sandwich''.

Exhibition

With Siue Moffat, Culp launched Satan Macnuggit Popular Arts in 1999, producing and distributing VHS videos and zines for sale at zine fairs and screening events. The Satan Macnuggit Video Road Show hosted over 70 screenings during its 2001 and 2003 cross-country tours, featuring zero-budget activist and art videos from such contributors as Meesoo Lee, Amy Lockhart, Mare Sheppard and the Direct Action Media Network. Today Culp’s production company is Unpopular Arts. Culp’s films have been screened at

Images An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media, including a project ...

, Inside/Out, the Chicago Anarchist Film Festival, True/False, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Perth International, In The Soil and the Montreal Underground Film Festival. From 2007 to 2018 Culp acted as co-programmer at Toronto’s underground screening venue Trash Palace, where they contributed prints from their large collection of 16mm Canadian and educational films. In late 2018 they donated much of their multimedia archive and papers to The Media Commons at the University of Toronto.

Writing

Culp is a long-time contributor to the Toronto zine community, authoring the multi-issue ''The Stupid Journey'' and ''Cinertia'' zines and contributing writing and comic art to ''Fuzzy Heads are Better'' and ''The Day I Woke Up Punk''. Culp was film and video editor for Broken Pencil magazine from 1999 to 2001, and has authored several reviews and essays for Paul Corupe’s canuxploitation.com. They have written reviews and features for many web sites and publications including The Cultural Gutter, Fuse, POV, Eclectic Screening Room, Clamor, Canadian Dimension, Filmprint and Now Magazine. They contributed the interview-based essay “Farther Shores: Experiments in Feature Narrative“ to the anthology Explosions In the Movie Machine.

Longer films and videos

*''Taking Shelter'' (2014) *''It Can Happen Here'' (2006) *''Grilled Cheese Sandwich'' (2005)

Selected short films and videos

*''I Regret'' (2018) *''A New Place To Dwell'' (2015) *''Hot Divorcee'' (2011) *''Reproduction Prohibited'' (2009, with Monica Pearce) *''Red Shift'' (2009) *''Eventually'' (2005) *''Death Mask'' (2004) *''How Does It Work?'' (2001) *''Chew It, Somalia!'' (1998) *''The Boob'' (1998) *''Jonathan Culp!'' (1996) *''Bark'' (1995)

Recordings

* ''Symptom Hall'' (Unpopular Arts, 2016) * Broken Puppy: ''Intro Version'' (Unpopular Arts, 2016) * Loogan Bin: ''General Strike'' (Satan Macnuggit cassette single,1998) * Loogan Bin: ''Scene Wrecker'' (Satan Macnuggit, 1996)