Care to learn more about Deco Dawson's learning curve since the local filmmaker picked up his first camera a decade ago?

It's all up there on the screen, folks.

From the black-and-white surrealist shorts that first heralded his rising talent, to his latest work -- a half-hour homage to 60 years worth of film history -- each of Dawson's projects represents the next step in his ongoing education.

But perhaps more impressive than the films themselves is the fact that Dawson chose to start his "schooling" squarely at the beginning, modelling his earliest works on the silent films common when cinema was still a fledgling medium.

"What I appreciated about those early silent films is they really didn't know how to make movies yet," says Dawson, a former theatre major who transitioned to film while immersed in the works of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. "They knew that people talked and spoke in real life, and they knew there was colour all over the place, yet they were limited in terms of conveying that in film.

"I felt much the same as a novice -- that I should start at the beginning, and try to learn it the way they'd learned it when it was brand new. As a filmmaker, you could say I started where film started."

You can see what Dawson is talking about this weekend, when his works are screened as part of a two-part retrospective at Cinematheque Friday and Saturday night.

The first instalment focuses on his acclaimed early shorts, shot on Super-8 stock in old-timey black-and-white, and rife with dream-like imagery.

The shorts are hypnotic -- mesmerizing, even -- and while they were lauded at festivals around the globe, Dawson now admits their surrealist style can pose a challenge to the average filmgoer.

"In the earlier movies, that sort of went hand-in-hand with my still developing my skills," he explains. "But they're not experimental films -- they're surrealist. They do tell a story, it's just that the story they tell is a little strange."

Given the similarities between some of their films, and the fact they often worked together, it's no surprise Dawson was soon labelled "the next Guy Maddin" by the Canadian press.

But having since moved on from high-contrast black-and-white, Dawson says he's happy to have carved out his own identity in the years since.

"For a period of time, it was very difficult to assert what I was doing, and how what I was doing was different," he says. "But I took a turn -- I finished learning what I needed to about black-and-white photography, and tried to learn more about the film medium in general. Had that not been the case, I may have created a fantastic career for myself, but only in one medium. I think it's necessary to move beyond that -- so I'm glad to have emerged, and not been submerged."

An encounter with Gus Van Sant in 2005 led Dawson to create Dumb Angel -- an improvised short showcasing the prodigious talents of Inward Eye drummer Anders Erickson. He followed up with Elizabeth Short, a collage-like tribute to the L.A. murder victim dubbed the Black Dahlia, and later re-edited a batch of (someone else's) "unusable" footage into a concert DVD for alt-rock act Metric. But it's his most recent achievement -- 2007's The Last Moment -- that's drawn even bigger buzz.

Commissioned for the Winnipeg Film Group's 30th anniversary, the piece charts the breakdown of a rocky relationship, using different film styles (noir, Dogme, Hitchcock, Tarantino and New Wave) to turn what could've been a conventional narrative on its ear.

It also stands as a testament to how far Dawson has come, and how committed he remains to pushing the boundaries of his chosen craft.

"I firmly believe feature filmmaking should be for the people, and should have a major access point and all the dramatic arcs we've come to expect," says Dawson, currently at work on a tribute to Jean Benoit, last of the French Surrealists. "But in the short film format, your audience is much more limited ... You're not relying on them to redeem your box office, so that's your opportunity to define yourself, and pull yourself away form the norm.

"The chances of having mass appeal are slim, so you might as well be as creative and ambitious as you want."

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