Film Categories: art & artists

  • Scratch, Crackle & Pop!

    SCRATCH, CRACKLE & POP! by animator and filmmaker Steven Woloshen highlights 30 years of aesthetic discoveries made in the production of Super 8, 16mm and 35mm animated/experimental films. Written for aspiring animators and film lovers alike, SCRATCH, CRACKLE & POP! is a one-of-a-kind guidebook that explores the techniques, processes and tools of the trade through in-depth case studies of thirteen of Woloshen’s best-known films. A companion DVD and two 35mm filmstrips are included in the book. “A whole grains approach to making films without a camera.” – Steven Woloshen Foreword by Marco de Blois, animation curator and programmer at Montréal’s…

  • Le Phare

    Unlike the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, Montreal’s iconic urban landmark is horizontal and spectral, not vertical and solid. Le Phare is a filmic portrait of the Montreal’s nocturnal marker, a spinning beacon that has been raking four long beams of light across the city’s environs since 1972. The nightly presence of these intense, rotating rays is reassuring for many, and yet also oddly perplexing: the illuminating machine does not provide reconnoitering for aviation; it is not synched to act as a time-keeping device; nor does it commemorate a specific historic moment or personage. Indeed, the lights serve…

  • Trailer

    The same duration as a standard promotional film trailer (two and a half minutes), Trailer documents the mechanical and support systems that are present at most large film productions.

  • Théodolitique

    Théodolitique is a moving image project that merges the geodetic and the filmic, linking the very long history of land surveying with the comparatively new technologies of film-making. Connecting these two methods of visual observation and recording, Théodolitique documents student surveyors from the École des Métiers du Sud-Ouest-de-Montréal as they take an outdoor exam over the course of a single day. The project utilizes a wide range of filmic and acoustic techniques — including a parabolic microphone to capture distant audio, and a custom built ‘theodocam’ to provide a surveyor’s eye view — to reflect and mimic how the students…

  • The European Rooms

    An unhurried camera glides by bedrooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, and entrance halls filled with finely crafted furniture and carefully selected objets. While displaying a familiar world of privilege, class, and prestige, these well-appointed rooms appear in the film as inescapably uncanny and oneiric. A slow unraveling of cinematic, sonic and architectural space played out in real time, The European Rooms is as confounding as it is elucidatory.

  • The Transformable Moment: The Films of Stephen Broomer

    “The Transformable Moment” is a collection of essays on the films of Stephen Broomer, edited by Scott Birdwise and Tom McSorley. Contributors include R. Bruce Elder, Dan Browne, Clint Enns, Zoe Heyn-Jones, Brett Kashmere, Scott Miller Berry, Cameron Moneo, Andrea Picard, and Michael Sicinski. “Having devoted his life to the art of cinema in his various capacities as a filmmaker, scholar, preservationist, and poet, Stephen Broomer is on his way to establishing himself among the most aesthetically and historical engaged experimental filmmakers in Canada. His practice is indeed ‘experimental’ in the best sense of the term: his films are imbued…

  • Scenes From Another Marriage

    Alex and Chris are a couple who take it upon themselves to remake Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage for the LGBT world. While the pressures of co-directing sometimes fuel tensions between them, they grow even more concerned about some irregularities that seem to befall the set. Namely, they become suspicious that there may in fact be an outside party skulking around. This is confirmed one day in a lull between shots, with a director-like person appearing behind their gear, crew in tow. As this new reality takes hold, and they find themselves pushed and pulled by this ‘other director,’…

  • The Blacksmith

    Shot in a traditional blacksmith shop, where the blacksmith uses coal for his fire, we hear as much as we see how this art is executed. There are bumps and grating sounds, sounds of a very hot fire, hammer sounds…and the vivid reds, yellows, blues and white of a very hot fire, along with the earth colors of most of the tools and machines. Finally, from time to time, we hear the blacksmith himself explain the essentials of the process and near the end, we even catch a brief glimpse of his face.

  • Two Streets & Adela (Dos Calles y una Chica)

    In this experimental narrative, we are in a world that moves more slowly, allowing us to savour the sights and sounds. The pace reminds us that in the location where the story unfolds, the south of Spain, things move at a more deliberate pace. We watch flamenco costume designer, Adela, on a very special day. Adela’s life has a rhythm to it, filled with the beautiful colours of the cloth that she uses to create her costumes with. The daily life outside her front window also has a rhythm to it: two streets that intersect in the charming city of…

  • House Dress #1-5

    Five short dance works by a senior dance artist. An exploration of the body in mid-life and confined spaces.