Staff profile

Aaron Zeghers

Faculty

Program

Aaron Zeghers is a Canadian filmmaker, film programmer, writer and educator from Winnipeg.

Zeghers works primarily as an experimental and non-fiction filmmaker, utilizing found images and histories, analog formats and obsolete technologies. His form-bending documentaries and expanded cinema performances blend the formally experimental with the intimately personal.

Zeghers’ films have screened at festivals and venues around the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Vancouver IFF, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Festival du nouveau cinéma, DOXA Film Festival, and New York’s Mono No Aware. Zeghers has also toured widely with his work, performing his expanded cinema work in Rotterdam, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Vancouver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Toronto and more.

Zeghers is the founder of www.InvertedPyramid.org -- an independent resource for moving image artists, academic researchers, funders and the general public to find out about Film Festivals' fiscal practices. The project is concerned with the exploitative hierarchy that has developed regarding moving image exhibition and fair compensation for artists, with the hopes of increasing organizational accountability and sparking discussions surrounding ethical arts management.

As a film programmer, Zeghers is a co-founder of the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival and the former Director for the Gimli International Film Festival, Manitoba’s largest film festival. He is currently on leave from his position as an Instructor at the Digital Film & Media Production Diploma Program at RRC Polytech in Winnipeg.

2021 Best Film Award, Gimme 10 in 30 Contest | Gimme Some Truth Doc Fest |Winnipeg, MB

2019 Hot House Award | Province of Manitoba (via Manitoba Film & Music + Manitoba Arts Council)

2019 Best Feature Film, Avant-Garde & Genre Competition | BAFICI | Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017 Best Super 8 Film | Artifact Film Festival | Calgary, Canada --- 2017 Grand Prix | Unforeseen Intl. Exp. Film Fest | Beograd, Serbia

2016 Honourable Mention | Milwaukee U.F.F. 2016 2nd Place Prize | Montreal U.F.F. 2013 Ex-aequo Prize | Montreal U.F.F.

2013 Best “Revision-Theme” Work | West Virginia Film Festival | Morgantown, USA

Supervisor: Jean-Claude Bustros

Thesis Film Title: "The Film Festival Industrial Complex" (research) & "Chromatic Scales : a colour suite" (research/creation)

Research Interests:

Experimental film, documentary, expanded cinema, 16mm, analog film, colour theory, vision and perception, synesthesia, colour science, history of photography, political cinema, political analysis of film festivals, anti-capitalist critiques of the arts sector, public policy and administration

Teaching/TAShips:

FFAR 298 EC - The City After Dark

FMPR 231 - Filmmaking I

FMPR 441 - Writing for Film II

Selected Filmography:

A Tolerable Planet | Documentary Feature | 16mm | 90min | 2026

My Friend Jim | Short Doc | Video | 11min | 2021

Memoirs | Short Experimental Doc | 16mm | 10min | 2019

DANNY | Doc | Found Footage | VHS-C | 50min | 2019

Everything Turns… | Short Experimental | 12min | Super 8 | 2017

Selected Publications:

Zeghers, A. (2025). Alternate Letters: A Response to Mike Hoolboom's 'ABCs of the Canon'. In C. Enns (Ed.), Mike Hoolboom: Work. Canadian Film Institute.

Zeghers, A. (2016-2025). Various Articles & Research. Inverted Pyramid.org

Zeghers, A. (2011-2013). Various Articles. Cineflyer Winnipeg.

Website: www.AaronZeghers.com

Instagram: @atozeghers

Favourite Films: Hot Chick (2002)