Film Categories: Families

  • People in the House, The

    “‘The People in the House’ examines the dynamics of a family in crisis and questions the role of religious devotion in the perpetuation of dysfunction. The exterior of the house is never seen, and the family’s anxiety, as is often the case, plays out within the confines of four walls. Filmed with a dreamy, surreal quality, ‘The People in the House’ dwells within the tension between harmony and chaos.” – Liz Czach, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue, Canada, 1995 Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Film, The 14th Uppsala Short Film Festival, Sweden, 1995; Special Jury Award, The 31st Yorkton Short…

  • Fissures

    A film about forgetting and remembering, about past presences and the traces they leave. In making this piece, Bourque literally distorted the personal home movie images appearing on the film plane through various manipulations in the process of doing her own low-tech contact printing. The images warp and fluctuate, creating a distorted space of fleeting apparitions, like re-surfacing memories. The footage was hand-processed and solarized as well as hand-coloured through toning. “A very short film that meshes the beautifully overlapping style of Bruce Baillie with rhythm and sound to create a meditation in blue.” – Stephen Brophy, artsMedia, March15 –…

  • Just Words

    “Using as it’s text Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I,’ this shocking gift incorporates optically printed home movie footage and an eerily slick close-up of actress Patricia MacGeachy as she rants at lightening speed Beckett’s words about home, family and the confines and alienation associated with being a woman.” – Program notes, Madcat Film Festival, San Francisco, 2001 “A 10-minute tour de force […]. In ‘Just Words,’ Bourque intercuts footage of her mother and her sisters with a performance by actress Patricia MacGeachy of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’; the result is unnerving (as all Beckett is) yet touching (as some Beckett is…

  • Pura Sangre

    Torn from the pages of a South American travelogue, “Pura Sangre” explores society’s obsession with sociological and biological bloodlines. Spanish-language version also available.

  • In a Present Distance…

    “In a Present Distance…” explores the complex terrain of motherhood, through an experimental narrative about a woman who travels to Quebec City to do research for a film she is making. While on the train, fragments of her life emerge and speak subtly to the journey of life: of grieving and loss, of happiness and sadness, as well as the joyful and reverent gestures of living. At the heart of this film is her child, shown at various times and spaces in his development as he explores the world around him. It is through him and his growth and discovery…

  • Scheme

    “‘Scheme’ is composed of photographs, text and drawings from my son’s creative play and school work. Many of the images are photographs he shot with a child’s Crayola 110 camera, which I feel capture some of the essence of movement and the transcience of childhood. The video is framed by ideas of how we are socialized to make patterns and connections to the world through the use of language. It explores this patterning through the relationship between the photographic image and a dialogue between my son & I.” – Tracy German

  • Memo to Pic Desk

    An idiosyncratic look at staging in news photography, using materials from the archives of a Toronto daily. Moral codes, delinquency and autonomy are pulled into an altered coherence, as vintage photos are examined next to their type-written paper trail. Financial assistance provided by the Ontario Arts Council. Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Short Film, Lusanne Underground Film Festival, 2007; Toronto International Film Festival, 2006; Jury’s Choice Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 2007; San Francisco International Film Festival, 2007; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007; Big Muddy Film Festival, 2007

  • DAS OVO (Ovo – das Video) | THE OVO (Ovo – the Video)

    “It’s not about how a drag queen moves, it’s what she sets in motion.” – Ovo Maltine, 1966-2005 Christoph Josten was Ovo Maltine. She died on February 8, 2005 at Berlin’s Auguste Viktoria hospital, eleven week after suddenly being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. She had lived with the HIV virus for 13 year. “Ovo (the egg)” – read one obituary – “lay down in Berlin’s nest of queens and brooded on a number of political projects: a hotline for gay victims of assault, Act Up, AIDS benefit events, the legalisation of marijuana, the recognition of prostitution as a profession, transgender…

  • Doctor’s Daughter or The Secret and the Lie, The

    “The Doctor’s Daughter or The Secret and the Lie” is the docu-dramatization of the beginning and the end of a six-year relationship between two young women. The film moves back and forth between Trinidad in 1991 and Toronto in 1996. Nicki (Janine Fung) visits her friend Regan (Gillian Frise) in Trinidad. Nicki falls in love with Regan but Regan is engaged to Howard (Richard Bolai). Nicki and Regan sleep together anyway. Six years later Regan returns to Toronto and moves in with Nicki. That’s when it gets hard to tell whose life is a lie and who’s living the lie.…

  • Dreaming House, The

    The filmmaker, his father and his youngest child walk past the house in Chinatown where the filmmaker’s father was born, triggering a sublime moment.