Prairie Tales 9 is the latest collection of short film and video works by Alberta media artists. Curated by Metro Cinema since 1998, Prairie Tales has toured extensively throughout Alberta and across Canada at numerous festivals, schools, media arts theatres and production centres. We're in good hands with Eva Colmers as we begin with her filmed shadow play Hand Sum, through which we come to Dominique Keller's & Andrea Bass' serene prairie dance Cea, as well as Kim Anderson's detailed and nuanced animated study on love in 2. Corey Lee questions most Albertan males' exaggerated displays of machismo in his analytical new comedy The Perfection of the Moment, and leads nicely into Alyssa McGowan's darker depiction of domestic violence and adolescent angst in Echo Park. More exotic locales, in the form of faraway planet Zig 5, await in Kevin Kurytnik's and Carol Beecher's animated Intergalactic Who's Who: The Pork N' Beings; and, we go from aliens to alienation in Michael Peterson's hilarious story about the late night happenings at a public library in The Song. In one of the better documentaries to emerge from Alberta this year, Lynn Eldershaw's Tricoter examines a small devoted community of knitters with Adolfo Ruiz's Emptiness acting as counterpoint about a bicycle courier's daily routine, and her growing sense of isolation and loss. A mystery involving a disturbed man's search for his wife is the grisly subject matter of Trevor Smith's Missing Person, followed by a trip to the fair in Garrett Baumgartner's brief, though perhaps no less dark, animated treat The Happiest Place on Earth. This tour's music video is represented by Julia Ain Burns' experimental piece You've Got Nothing but Light, Let it Shine; and, we end with Trevor Anderson's fascinating experiment in Rock n' Roll socio-norms in his masterpiece Rock Pockets. (Paul Williams)