Clark Nikolai

Directing

Clark Nikolai

Place of birth

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Known for

Directing

Credits

13 titles

Originally from Saskatchewan, where he made films and videos in Saskatoon’s vibrant punk and parallel art scenes, Nikolai's work covers all genres and often combines found footage, music and experimental visual effects, stylized staging and dream-like experimental narratives. He is an early pioneer of video art in the Canadian prairies, and was a founding member of both the Open Air Audio Visual Co-op (1984) and Video Vérité Artist Centre (1989) of Saskatoon (now PAVED). Since 1981, he has produced over fifty videos and films, which have screened and received awards around the world. His practice has also included still photography and experimental music.

Known for

Film credits

Behind the camera

Troublemaker on the Frequency poster
NR

Troublemaker on the Frequency is a short experimental video that explores mis-communication through found sound recordings, amateur radio, and glitch.

Troublemaker on the Frequency

2016

Cockleidoscope poster
NR

Asking for help at a seaside mansion, a ship captain is told " You're just in time for coffee. Come on in." He then is sucked into a world of discussions about video art.

Cockleidoscope

2023

Cockleidoscope poster
NR

Asking for help at a seaside mansion, a ship captain is told " You're just in time for coffee. Come on in." He then is sucked into a world of discussions about video art.

Cockleidoscope

2023

Cockleidoscope poster
NR

Asking for help at a seaside mansion, a ship captain is told " You're just in time for coffee. Come on in." He then is sucked into a world of discussions about video art.

Cockleidoscope

2023

Frolic poster
NR

A journey to a lake to find danger.

Frolic

2010

Avalanche poster
NR

An experimental film involving ice cubes melting in a trough at a leather bar.

Avalanche

2007

Subkonscio Rapida poster
NR

An experiment in found-footage and archival processes. Subkonscio Rapida was originally shot in 1988 and then... forgotten. Forty years later, the 16mm film has been rediscovered and recut. Completed by the same artist at two very different points in his life, Subkonscio Rapida is a meditation on memory, time, and rediscovery.

Subkonscio Rapida

2025

A Message poster
NR

Using found footage, several members of royalty inform the citizens of an impending doom from space coming toward Earth.

A Message

2012

Exempli gratia poster
NR

Psychiatric labelling imparts new meanings to found footage of 1980s TV and home movies from Saskatoon's punk scene.

Exempli gratia

2013

Petrus et Lupa poster
NR

A young man in the Alps is confronted with his culture's fears of nature, wolves, sexuality and wildness. Based on the short story Peter and the Wolf by Angela Carter.

Petrus et Lupa

1995

Travel Sketch poster
NR

A frustrated jet-setter who can't travel discovers video superimposition. Through the magic of video technology, he is relegated to a box at the bottom of the screen as other people's pictures of faraway lands are shown. The protagonist reflects his generation's acceptance of today's diminished expectations. He is left to film his seemingly blank space coupled with his amusing narrative as others explore the world.

Travel Sketch

1991

Mary Manic's Decorum poster
NR

A man and a woman attempt to start a conversation with a third person. A spinoff of Spanghew Decorum.

Mary Manic's Decorum

1983