Film Categories: Families

  • Pursuit of Happyness, The

    This film explores the work and travels of John and Frank Navin, two gay brothers from Chicago, who create modern easy-listening music under the moniker The Aluminum Group. The film documents a music tour of Northern Italy where their musical past and future meet. With Cynthia Plaster Caster.

  • Changing Evan

    Is my daughter Evan like a puzzle? Just when I think everything is going well, either a germ will attack or a new emotion will surface. I hear that children change every week. When I was making this film, my daughter was invaded by the chicken pox virus. I was convinced that I must finish this film as quickly as possible because her health was directly linked to its completion. Honourable mention by the Canadian Film Centre at the 2006 Ottawa International Animation Festival.

  • Lead Role: Father

    When writer and director Joseph Chu puts out an open casting call for his new film based on his family, he never expects his own father to audition for the lead role. Caught somewhere between his real memories of his father and the fictional character he’s created, Joseph is forced to confront his own fears, hypocrisies, and realizations.

  • Wide-Eyed

    In an awkward attempt to meet the ideal western standards of beauty, Julie, a 16-year-old Korean-Canadian, obsesses about double eyelid surgery. Her tomboy sister Jean is fascinated yet repulsed by her older sister’s serious body-image issues. Neither of them can come to any entirely comfortable sort of compromise on the right way to love each other, or themselves. Selected screenings: International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany; Visual Communications, LA, California; Giffoni Film Festival, Salerno, Italy.

  • Paper, Scissors, Rock

    “Paper, Scissors, Rock” is the story of an unhappily married Korean woman who finds salvation in punk music after a breakdown.

  • close & low

    An ordinary dog effortlessly contains the most admirable human traits, much to the sorrow of one pathetic little man.

  • Attack of the Bride Monster

    A “Bride Monster” is loose in the gay community; can Betty and Stella’s 25-year relationship survive? When Betty falls under the Bride Monster ‘s bedazzling spell, Stella watches in horror as her long-time companion is transformed into the kind of woman that only Rock Hudson (or Godzilla) could love. Attack of the Bride Monster blends live-action and animation in a highly stylized homage to the romantic comedies and monster movies of the 1950s. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the rise and fall of same sex marriage, Attack of the Bride Monster challenges all lovers to pop this question: “Just…

  • Going Back Home

    Turmoil of unsheltered childhood; the dwelling as self. “Louise Bourque’s ‘Going Back Home’ conveys a sense of loss and upheaval with just a few images.” – Steve Anker and Kathy Geritz, program notes, San Francisco International FIlm Festival, 2002 “The disasters of life can make it hard to go home. Bourque’s brief, beautiful, and affecting film goes by so quickly it’s printed twice on the reel, so you can get a second look.” – Program notes, Images Festival, 2001 “To the scratchy sounds of an old music box… ‘Going Back Home’ weaves snippets of old reels of houses collapsing, fires…

  • Jolicoeur Touriste

    An enclosed space, a struggle against the constraints of personal isolation explored through a fractured narrative. A man living in a broken-down rented room in a Tourist Inn travels through his inebriation, his memories and his fantasies, transcending the limits of time and space, which suddenly intertwine. A film about loss and absence. Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Short, Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia, 1990; Outstanding Achievement Award, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, 1989; Honorable Mention, The Canadian International Annual Film Festival, Ottawa, ON, 1990; Opening film, 39th International Mannheim Film Week, Germany, 1990

  • Imprint

    “Louise Bourque’s ‘Imprint’ focuses obsessively on home-movie images of her family’s house, which seems gloomily oppressive, almost filling the frame; she repeats the images with various alterations – tinted, bleached, partly scraped away – as if attacking the place, turning its darkness into light.” – Fred Camper, The Reader, Chicago, April 16 1999 “‘Imprint’… throttles and exhausts a particular memory-image (a family on a porch in an ambiguous position – good-bye/hello, reuniting/reinforcing/celebrating?) and traces its corrosion and dissolution even as it intensifies it physically. Dyes, zip-a-toning, a weird daguerrotype shiny effect, and ripping makes for a very concrete trip.” –…