Film Categories: Animals

  • Babash

    “Babash” is a parrot who speaks mostly Farsi but ­sometimes mixes English and Azeri into his ­conversations. A singular language resulting from the place where he lives: a house in Los Angeles shared with an Iranian family. The same place where Behrouz Rae developed a friendship with Babash over the years. This short film is an associative portrait about a special relationship and the ­domestic surroundings in which it grew. An ­assemblage where household objects, daily movements and playful intimacies are mixed with a dauntless montage, precise sounds and a sensitive gaze. Observing this genuine cross-species friendship between Babash and…

  • lessons on flight

    Shot on B&W 16 mm film, eco-processed with olives and hand coloured on site in rural Chile, lessons on flight examines the flight patterns of the green-backed firecrown hummingbird. lessons on flight is an exercise in site-based eco processing, where the film’s shooting site also provided the materials for processing. The film was shot in rural Chile, at the site of the filmmaker’s father’s childhood home, and was developed with olives freshly picked in the yard. The oil from the olives left a cast on the film that interacted with food colouring placed on the film following fixing, leaving unique…

  • Cod Story

    This is a case study of the Canadian cod fisheries collapse of 1992. It investigates what the future of natural resource management holds, and what we can learn from our past mistakes.

  • Wanderings through the delta

    2 x 2k or 4k video installation. Alternately available as a single channel program with both image tracks in one file. Colour. Run time 22′. Presented here with both channels combined into one stream. Ideal projection size: 2 x 8’x15′ or larger. Exhibition setup is flexible: ideal scenarios are a single long wall or two hanging screens either aligned in straight line or at an angle of approx. 120 degrees to each other. NOTE: This film has NO voiceover. The subtitles stand on their own and do not correspond to any recorded voice track. A film of current urgency, now…

  • As Grey Falls

    4k, colour, 22′ What touches us when we are amongst wild animals like the birds of the Fraser River Delta in British Columbia? They do not touch us physically. They seem, at best indifferent to our presence; perhaps they are annoyed. Do they even look at us when their gaze seems turned our way? We cannot know. Nonetheless we love these creatures, and hope that they will persist. “As Grey Falls” wanders delicately in the places these birds call home, wondering where a human’s place is in their worlds. “As Grey Falls” is a film of current urgency, now that…

  • You’ve Got Tail

    A mail carrier is in for a salty surprise! The pups at this house are a little friendlier than he was expecting…

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Flying to Nowhere

    A flock of seagulls persist in the senseless attempt to move forward against heavy winds coming off the ocean.

  • Insect Express

    This is a music video for the song “Insect Express” by Brooklyn-based musician, El Tryptophan. The video explores an intersection of species; insect flight patterns and modes of industrial travel merge as collective rituals in a fever dream.

  • My Fuzzy Valentine

    Put the Playboy centrefold in the hands of a Dyke and she will make her into a monster. A pulsating world of bug-eyed lesbian sasquatches and vaginal caves created from reclaimed textiles. Visual artist Allyson Mitchell’s shape-shifting materials and colors explode off the screen on hand-processed and scratched 16mm film.