Film Categories: Abstraction

  • Monument

    Beginning in ghostly abstraction and accumulating texture by texture into a droning meditative trance, Monument deepens to a visual and sonic intensity, mixing Super 8 film with video footage to create a complicated, multilayered encounter with the tension of protest and reclamation. A vivid and energetic durational experience of collective resistance and celebration. Super 8 footage of the decaying monuments of Presidents Park (Croaker, VA) are layered with video footage captured on Monument Avenue (Richmond, VA) during the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Themes of registration and re- calibration are explored through form and content and…

  • Light Sketch

    A kaleidoscope lens and a December evening at Lions Festival of Lights in Calgary.

  • Uncle Bardo

    Through an innovative blend of documentary, archival film manipulation, and experimental stop-motion animation, Uncle Bardo delves into the memories of an estranged family member who has undergone a near-death experience and awakens lost between two worlds. Rooted in the industrial landscape of Hamilton Ontario, we get lost in Uncle Bardo’s memories of a coma as he strives to find his sense of reality and recover his health.

  • Nihelious

    The work “Nihelious” is created from videos originally intended for the design of wedding movies. The angels, hearts, roses are all 3D computer graphics created in the early 2000s that were used as decoration, additional environments for commissioned wedding videos to enhance their aesthetics. The resulting video is the culmination of half a year of media archaeology, digging up and reviewing hundreds of gigabytes of footage. This is how the secondary characters of wedding DVDs came to the foreground and gained independence from their decorative function. And at this point the cute little angels began to show signs of monstrosity.

  • Fluss

    A journey down the Danube River is transformed into a dream space of half-seen images and flickering shorelines. Though at times abstract, the river remains certain, always moving towards the sea. Filmed in black and white 16mm and hand-processed, Fluss is a companion to River (2023), a study of the Ottawa River in winter. Commissioned by Ottawa’s Lightproof Film Collective.

  • A Flame the Colour of Air

    Medieval Catholic mystic Hildegard von Bingen reconciles the virgin/whore dichotomy in a psychedelic, erotic vision. Hildegard was known for her waking visions of the divine, her musical compositions, and her extensive medical encyclopedias. The animated imagery in this film is inspired by her surviving transcriptions, which suggest a departure from the mainstream views of her culture. In this speculative fictional tale, Hildegard has a vision in which erotic dancers appear to her as embodiments of the divine. The narration is strategically selected and collaged from Hildegard’s texts.

  • Hedge-Rider

    The Hedge-Rider sits at the boundary between the garden and the wild. She uses flying ointments to transcend her body and take flight during the night. The film attempts to capture themes around European witchcraft and altered states of consciousness.

  • huit juillets / eight julys

    This experimental documentary explores intergenerational transmission through the story of Dolorès; almost a century of women’s history and Quebec history. Through intimate audio encounters, she invites us to relive her life in a non-chronological way, revealing her victories, her regrets, but above all the feminist roots of a woman who always wanted more than she was allowed to dream for. With a fiery character, a resilience tinged with optimism and a spirit of perpetual questioning, she offers us a retrospective on the last century marked by a quest for intellectual and financial independence. The image, for its part, is a…

  • Fractures chimiques ON/OFF

    Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the result of an audiovisual performance combining 16mm projection and reactive electronic music. Using a sensor device attached directly to the screen, the light information escaping from the projectors is collected and transferred to modular synthesizers which generate the film’s live soundtrack. Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the first film of a series of experiments on the relationship between music and film in performative contexts.

  • Digital Evangelism

    Set in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke, where religious monuments and the remains of colonization can be found everywhere, Digital Evangelism observes technology’s increasing presence and replacement of religion in society. Juxtaposing catholic iconography, filmed on a vintage camera, with overlays of technology-themed GIFs notes how technology is worshipped, and internet usage feels like a religious experience, from AI being the all-knowing source, online figures being praised, and devoting hours a day to our phones.