Film Categories: environment

  • Jardins du Marais (Marsh Gardens)

    These magnificent gardens, in the Parc naturel régional de Brière, in the middle of the presqu’ile de Guérande, Loire-Atlantique, in France, covers over a hectare of land. It’s vegetable garden, ornamental garden, small forest and two ponds, make up a continuously evolving space, but also a visual mumble-jumble of wild life that draws one to delve into it in order to explore it cinematographically. In honor of Annick Bertrand-Gillen and Yves Gillen, the creators of this magnificent space in the middle of nature. (R.L.)

  • Rien d’extraordinaire (Nothing Special)

    Just a glimpse of this beautiful spot around the Hôtel-Pension Beau-Site on the Chemin sur Martigny, Switzerland, in a hamlet surrounded by snow-capped mountains. (R.L.) Music by François Alexis Degrenier (NB: Music starts before picture and ends after picture).

  • Starlings (at Nightfall)

    In Peter Dudar’s hypnotic and vaguely menacing “Starlings (at Nightfall),” we are witness to a strange intersection between the forces of nature and a man-made structure. A single, static, eight-minute-long shot documents the spiraling flight of thousands of starlings around a power transmission tower at dusk. “Suppose we wanted to understand the flocking behaviour of starlings…. What is remarkable about the starlings behaviour is that, despite all appearances, there is no choreographer and, as far as we know, no leader. Each individual bird is just following local rules.” – Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth Steam Whistle Homebrew Award,…

  • Ride This Country

    “Ride This Country” observes the interplay between man, machine and landscape during a long day of work. Festival premiere at Media City Festival (Windsor, ON), 2011

  • Out on the Street

    This short film explores LGBTQ youth homelessness in Toronto and the lack of support available. Several people’s lived experiences are shared.

  • L’Internationale

    In a foreign landscape, futuristic factories and boreholes harvesting geothermal steam serve as beacons of familiarity in the face of an unknown future. Selected screenings: Best Experimental, Chicago Underground Film Festival; Signal & Noise Media Art Festival (Vancouver, BC), 2011; Honorable Mention, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, 2011

  • Difficult Love

    “Difficult Love” is an intimate, thought-provoking portrait of internationally celebrated South African lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi, and her highly personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today. The film features interviews with Muholi as well as with her friends, colleagues and peers, and provides a compelling overview of the artist, her life and her work. This poignant documentary takes us behind the façade of art making and shares with us the highly political environment Muholi must navigate in order to bring her lush photographs to light. Winner Best Short Film – Audience Award, Africa in the…

  • Back View

    The Upper West Side has some of the tallest brick apartment buildings in NYC. The orderly but deserted and aging concrete courtyards, their metal stairs and shafts, register a dramatically changing atmosphere. This is a cinema that seeks to observe, obscure, shorten and protract, and redefine, while remaining open ended. Selected screenings: Views from the Avant Garde, New York Film Festival, 2011; Off and Free Film Festival (Seoul, Korea), 2011

  • Tableaux Vivants

    A rumination on cinematic time reversals as versatile continuums. Re-discovering the outdoors as (a stage) set where the natural is made to pose as the artifice. Selected screenings: Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival (Chicago, USA), 2011; Views from the Avant Garde, New York Film Festival, 2011

  • Armoire (in 4 parts)

    A four-part study of motion, shape and colour inspired by a robin’s flight. “The aviary in the mirror, in-flight hide-and-seek, mischief on the wing.” – Mark McElhatten, Rotterdam Film Festival Consists of: “Armoire Prologue” (2:40, 2007), “Coda” (2:30, 2009) and two new episodes (2011). Selected screenings: Views from the Avant Garde, New York Film Festival, 2011; Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montreal, QC), 2011