Under Chad Valley.

Written and directed by Jeff Erbach. 8 minutes. 35mm. 1998.

Following on the promise of his earlier films, Gavin Frogboy and Soft Like Me, Winnipeg filmmaker Jeff Erbach has delivered another troubling, visually stunning slice (or rather, slices) of very peculiar drama. In a murky, subterranean butchery, obscure tensions grow between two burly butchers as they hack apart slabs of flesh and bone. Witnessing the increasingly gruesome struggle are two odd little girls who, the film suggests but never confirms, may also participate in the action. Sprinkled with arresting optical effects, Erbach's latest film seeks out a poetics of the appalling in a world submerged in death, waste and sonically polluted by the din of industrial groans and creaking metal. While lacking the unsettling clarity and political punch of Soft Like Me, Under Chad Valley is equally compelling and possibly even more disturbing. Indeed, Under Chad Valley is a feast of prairie Grand Guignol which stres unflinchingly at the slimy liquids and solids roiling beneath the surface of human society and human skin. One of the brightest talents at the Winnipeg Film Group, Jeff Erbach continues to dream darkly and, pardon the expression, to carve out a distinctive niche for himself as a film artist.