Film Categories: Abstraction

  • Over the Island

    On the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the act of leaving has become ingrained into the culture. Since the closure of its main industries, the Glace Bay coal mine and the Sydney steel plant, many young families have been forced to relocate, migrating thousands of miles in the pursuit of work. ‘Over the Island’ is an experimental documentary that follows a mother traveling back home to the island, and a filmmaker attempting to connect the past with the present. This film deconstructs the concept of ‘home’, and investigates how one’s sense of belonging, self identification and familial relationship are…

  • Abstract Horror

    Abstract Horror is part documentary, part speculation about the new forms of religion and spirituality mediated by new technologies. It takes inspiration from the current philosophical and scientific discourse, and it borrows heavily from the aesthetic of New Age esoteric cults.In particular, the film is a portrait of philosopher Nick Land, one of the founding fathers of leftist accelerationism who has in recent years left the West for China to become an adamant alt-right supporter, trying to bring about the end of civilization. The film is built around a conversation with Land who in its course talks about the abstract…

  • Glide

    * official selection Millennium Film Workshop, Brooklyn 2024 * official selection Athens Animfest – 3rd Prize Experimental Competition * official selection Les Sommets du cinema d’animation, Montreal * official selection The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film FestivaL A meditation on the radically different means of creation available to us, Jason Zumpano’s latest short “Glide” is an invitation to the mythopoetic and the various materials, from the painterly to the digital, that bring it into existence. Against Matisse-like colour palettes and impressionistic-resolutions, the central figure of “Glide” is a woman floating on a lantern-helmed rowboat. We float through various angles and…

  • Phatter pussykat-super cah

    In a post apocalyptic setting two gangs set out to save a young girl from being kidnapped by a psychotic villain. In comic book fashion all end as a part of the game in the structure of society.

  • River

    A hand-processed black and white study of the Ottawa River in winter. Commissioned by the Lightproof Film Collective with sound design by Eric Walker.

  • Rough Blazing Star

    A new experimental documentary film project from artist/filmmaker Christopher Wiersema examines anarchism, local history and memory, Emma Goldman’s writing, and a shared love of flowers. Told through a poetic inquiry and response to the text and research – beginning with a visit to the Old Labor Hall in Barre, Vermont – the social center of the Italian anarchist and socialist community in the early 1900’s.

  • Gags N’ Gals: Male Order

    A short experimental film inspired by the paintings of biblical women from German Renaissance painter, Lucas Cranach. The film reimagines Cranach’s paintings through a modern, critical lens, exploring female sensuality and their ability to use it as their own personal weapons.

  • Why is water so heavy? vol i. time never changed water

    In part of an ongoing autobiographical-fictional collection entitled “Why is water so heavy?” (c. 2022-present), interlocking the fluidity and borderless nature of water in relation to diaspora and landmarking. I dwell on self-ambiguity as time continues to spatialize fragments of my ancestral histories and cultural practices lost in water.

  • Toronto, Old and New

    Allegedly “bursting at the seams” for over a century now, Toronto is cacophonous, cosmopolitan, and often confusing. A landscape shaped by generations of dreams and desires, the metropolis bears the overlapping imprints of capitalism, colonialism, conflict, community and celebration. Juxtaposing found footage, paper ephemera, and newly shot 16mm material, “Toronto, Old and New” explores the relationship between past and present in Canada’s largest city.

  • Six Months

    “Six Months” (2023) is a critique of alcohol within a North American cultural context, through societal pressure and mass marketing. It challenges notions of perfection in maintaining sobriety and the stigma surrounding relapse. This project uses different types of alcohol in its developing process, as well as multiple in-camera exposures, transforming alcohol from an intoxicant to an artistic tool.