Film Categories: Ecology

  • The Weight of Snow

    A home movie of a trip to Chernobyl, a dying matriarch and a set of troubling personal circumstances, The Weight of Snow is an essay documenting memory, time and place. A film referencing the tradition of personal travelogue films of The Escarpment School and the essay style of Sans Soleil, The Weight of Snow travels from Canada to Chernobyl from the perspective of a young man exploring radiation in the midst of death, cancer and emotional turmoil. A collection of all techniques used throughout the Lion series, The Weight of Snow is the centerpiece of the work. Echoing the collage…

  • Forever

    Part dream, part documentary, Forever weaves history and hedonism to form a world of dandelions, hypnosis, bicycles and memory. Created from experiments replicating the effects of radiation on film, the piece explores the nature of airborne radioactivity and brings us from a woman’s story of adolescence, to a bicycle race, to life in the Soviet Union. A bricolage of pop culture and personal histories, Forever is about looking for dandelions and finding atoms. As the opening film of Lion, Forever employs spray and smudge techniques to explore the concept of airborne radioactive contaminants and how they travel in open air.…

  • Water

    A film exploring the impulsive nature of radiation, Water is the last dream of a dying man. Using brilliant blue and black images from cross-processed 16mm, the film explores the end of the 3 Chernobyl divers – three men who sacrificed their lives to drain a pool of radioactive hydrogen peroxide beneath the burning reactor no. 4 during the Chernobyl disaster. Mutating out of darkness in to a piercing blue, Water drifts under the surface of consciousness and into final memories. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Sodium Lamp Study

    A technical experiment about exposure and an interview of a woman’s experience with radioactive ablation therapy for thyroid cancer, Sodium Lamp Study is a meditation on exposure, treatment, and the unseen emotional effects of radiation. The visual element of Sodium Lamp Study explores the photographic concept of reciprocity failure – when the exposure of an image is separated in to multiple exposures rather than a single exposure with the same light strength, the results become unreliable. In a similar way, patients facing the treatment of thyroid cancer are presented with an option of a single dose of radioactive iodine, or…

  • Cowboys and Iodine

    An attempt to tame the atomic frontier, Cowboys and Iodine is a fever dream involving the masculine bravado and seldom-discussed gender shaming used to encourage men to volunteer as liquidators for the cleanup of the Chernobyl disaster. Employing dip, spray and smudge techniques to replicate the different methods of radiation exposure the men experienced. The film also employs a split negative/reversal process to reflect the methods that waves of radiation enter the body. Cowboys and Iodine blends subtext, social stigma and personal aspiration to construct the internal contemplation of a man going to war with the atom. The full-length version…

  • Lion

    A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion explores the Chernobyl disaster and the nature of radiation, recollection, and personal history. Lion navigates atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and a cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amidst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. This conceptually arranged film album is composed of seven works on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. The series combines memory, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations…

  • BROKEN ANGEL (GEBROCHENGEL)

    In Frankfurt near St. Peter’s church on Klaus-Mann-Platz, there is a memorial with an angel sculpture (aka Frankfurter Engel) for the homosexual men and women persecuted and murdered during the Third Reich. 2013 was a tumultuous year for LGBT rights like the spike in hate crimes in the U.S. post-DOMA, and passing of anti-gay legislation worldwide (most notably Russia and India). On 6 May 2013, the anniversary of Marlene Dietrich’s death and 80th year past the Third Reich, Stephen explores the historical and ongoing queer struggle and gilded apology of monuments in a guerilla performance by colliding the Frankfurter Engel…

  • Light Study

    “Light Study” is a poetic examination of the wetlands, forests, and ecosystems of the Niagara Escarpment. Meticulously filmed over several seasons, it explores the unique landscape of the Bruce Trail using 16mm single frame photography. Here, nature presides over an ephemeral human element, its primordial essence both medium and agent of light’s eternal change. Soundtrack composed by Graham Stewart, member of the experimental music collective Viosac. Selected screenings & awards: Valle D’Itria Film Festival, Best Animation Award, North America (Italy, 2014); 3rd Delhi Shorts International Film Festival, Special Mention, Documentary (India, 2014); Summer Slam Film Festival, Jury Award, Best Documentary…

  • Arrested Decay

    A film based on a novella of the same name by the filmmaker. A video poem where nations of dilapidated buildings is the focus and the richest peaceful nation lives in substandard housing and has an inadequate food supply.

  • Dear Tree

    A video poem about clear-cutting forestry and its effects on the air we breathe. The film draws parallels between present day and the renaissance.