Keno City of Silver / Montréal, Canada / U.S. Premiere

Since the portholes of the Elsa silver mine closed in 1989, the population of Keno City, Yukon, a community that housed many of Elsa’s miners and workers, dwindled to a mere twenty inhabitants. But unlike many other frontier mining towns, this tiny end-of-the-road settlement defied complete abandonment. While searching for Keno’s reason for being, this film explores the dynamics of frontier lifestyle, cultural preservation and attachment to place, drawing a portrait of quasi-ghost town and the community that is responsible for its revival. Through detailed and storied observations, captured in both video and film footage, Keno City of Silver also connects the collapse of the silver mining industry with filmography, mirroring the history of Keno with that of silver-based photography and the arrival of the digital age.

Director's Biography:

essica Auer is a Canadian visual artist who divides her time between Montreal, Québec and Seydisfjördur, Iceland. Her work is broadly concerned with the study of landscapes as cultural sites focusing on themes that connect history, place, journey and cultural experience. Jessica received her MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 2007 and has since participated in numerous international artist residency programs including The Chilkoot Trail AIR in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, Centre Diaphane in Picardie, France, and at the Baer Art Centre in Iceland. Recent exhibitions include: Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse, Yukon 2016; La Quadrilatère, Beauvais, France 2016; Oslo8, Basel, Switzerland 2015; and The Gotland Museum of Art, Visby, Sweden 2015. Jessica currently teaches photography at Concordia University.