Film Categories: Earth

  • Plein Air Etude

    An ecstatic, kinetic formal study of light, colour, and movement shot in the region of the Montreal River which so inspired members of the Group of Seven.

  • Portrait of Small Hydro, A

    A sister film to “Water Power,” “A Portrait of Small Hydro” concentrates on three hydro entrepreneurs who bought up old dam sites in New England and rebuilt them for production of power. In 1978, the US Congress passed the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) which requires utilities to buy power at fair rates from private producers. With a guaranteed return, investors scurried all over the country looking for suitable sites. Charles MacArthur found his “bottomless oil well” in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. In1977, his 600 kw output was worth $12,000 a year. In the early 1980s, it was worth $120,000. But,…

  • Poulet Poulet

    “Poulet Poulet” is a light-hearted sociological look at the many roles of poultry in human life. The emphasis is placed on the lesser-known aspects of human/chicken relationships. Writer and broadcaster Margaret Wisser discusses the evolution of the interaction between people and chickens, including their poor example as sexual role models. Members of the Feather Fancier display their prize-winning birds. Songs, toys and chickens round out this picture.

  • Presence, The

    “The Presence” reflects some sight of Insect as Being. The imagined aura and environment of a beetle creates a “world” wherein this solitary insect may simply be seen.

  • Quiproquo

    Situated in an environment where nature and social-industrial technology meet, the film attempts a visual dialogue with (and critique of) mainstream society’s concerns. To the extent that it refers to the economy of means involved in relation to what is stated, the work is both a reflection on the possibilities of the medium and an inquiry concerning the implications of the reality filmed.

  • Ranch: The Alan Wood Ranch Project

    “Ranch” is about The Alan Wood Ranch Project, a massive environmental art piece built on 320 acres in the foothills of the Rockies. Combining time-lapse photography, old Hollywood Westerns, television news and aerial photography, “Ranch” offers the viewer a refreshing new appreciation of the work. A film of breathtaking beauty and a document of surprising humour, “Ranch” is part experimental cinema, part documentary.

  • Rat Life and Diet in North America

    “I can tell you that Wieland’s film holds. It may be about the best (or richest) political movie around. It’s all about rebels (enacted by real rats) and police (enacted by real cats). After long suffering under the cats, the rats break out of prison and escape to Canada. There they take up organic gardening, with no DDT in the grass. It is a parable, a satire, an adventure movie, or you can call it pop art or any art you want – I find it one of the most original films made recently.” – Jonas Mekas “The film is…

  • Rattle

    The film is, at once, a document of a great Canadian multinational facing perilous agricultural “sophistication,” and a lament – a witness to the element of ruin that plagues industry. The Massey Harris King Street Factory (Toronto) was built in 1879 to a chorus of consternation. The size and scope were unprecedented in Canada at that time, and it established this company (later to be Massey Ferguson) as a major manufacturing firm in the agricultural industry. The film is a journey through the remnants of the factory which, for years, served as the pillar of the corporation. Seen from afar,…

  • Reading Canada Backwards

    A travel log of a technical object keeping time on a big train. Camera: never is the camera looked through during the making of this film; most shots are hand held, kept level with the horizon & always points east with the train’s direction. Sound: 2 train tracks looped, 2 tracks blues guitar by Erich Fox. Opening: Vancouver at Nanaimo St. Bridge with a motorcycle mirror. Movement: 12000 frames. 4000 miles from Vancouver to Halifax with 3 frames of film shot for every mile. (90 telephone poles every 30 miles – 5 second sequences). Closing: Halifax at Young Ave. bridge…

  • Real Italian Pizza

    Selected moments from eight months of street life outside a Manhattan pizza parlour, as seen from a fourth-floor loft. People coming and going, changes in weather, light. My first dramatic film. (DR) “A cheerful, slightly crazy jauntiness prevails that may be as close as film form can come to really capturing a mood of the city.” – Roger Greenspun