Film Categories: film studies

  • Figure on the Ground, A

    A hand-tinted hand-processed film loop dances with an obsolete low-tech telecine transfer machine to the underscore of a filtered soundscape. A portrait of the filmmaker in several inferences at once, with a nod to a few of her influences.

  • Two Hummingbirds

    A beautifully understated work that creates an almost palpable sense of absence through a simple interplay of word and image.

  • Pictures of Things That Aren’t There

    “Pictures of Things That Aren’t There” is an anthology of six works loosely tied together by the circumstance of their making: all were initiated while Daniel was caring for her mother as she lived out her life with a disease that erodes the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Her mother’s illness is never more than peripherally addressed. Daniel attends instead to the unnoticed workings of the creative imagination – the capacity of mind she believed her mother had lost. They are small works, made for one person and offered to anyone else who cares to appreciate them. Aesthetic…

  • In the Kingdom of Shadows

    “In the Kingdom of Shadows” documents a paragraph being typeset on an early twentieth-century Ludlow Linecaster. The text is taken from Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of the Lumiere Brothers’ film “Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat” (1895). As the words melt into a pool of lead, the alchemical magic of printing is linked to that of cinema. Commissioned by LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) for their 25th anniversary program, “Film is Dead! Long Live Film!” Selected screenings: Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007; Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2007

  • Lake Ontario (in my head)

    A meditative look at a mutable and hypnotic horizon. Grainy Super 8 imagery, optically printed 16mm footage and an atmospheric soundtrack evoke the stillness of mind reached when standing before expansive sky and water. Filmed at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, Lake Ontario (in my head) was created as part of LIFT’s 25th anniversary Film is Dead… Long Live Film! commissioning project.

  • Dear Guy

    “Dear Guy” dramatizes an inward and sometime romantically sentimental meditation on the relevance, remembrance and acculturation of Guy Debord’s life and works. The layered histrionics of the film engender reconsiderations of identification, moral responsibility, nostalgia and the potential of art in contemporary society. Excerpts from Debord’s memoir and fictional epistolary monologues are combined with an eclectic assortment of appropriated materials, invented leitmotifs, lecture performances, hybrid forms of the essay film, documentary and edutainment formats. “Dear Guy” drifts through a labyrinth-like montage structure that frustrates passive viewing while inviting contemplation. “DEAR GUY is an energetic response and thoughtful companion piece to…

  • Moving Images – The Film-Makers’ Cooperative Relocates

    The day the Film-Makers’ Cooperative was forced by loss of lease to move from their offices at Lexington Ave. and 31st Street in New York City, filmmaker and Coop member Joel Schlemowitz showed up with a camera to document the historic moment. On the soundtrack Jonas Mekas, one of the Coop’s founders, and MM Serra, the current executive director, describe the Coop’s beginnings, the organization’s recent struggles, and the difficulties of finding space for the arts.

  • Dance, The

    “With an irresistible humour, Rimmer speculates in “The Dance” on the nature of the film loop. We see a (1920’s) couple whirling around a dance floor at a dizzying pace… Even after the technical building block of the film is evident, the vertiginous effect remains… Uncanny in its ability to evoke complexity of responses from a simplicity of means.” – Art and Cinema, #2

  • Tape Film

    Made as an experiment in hand-processing, the film cycles through five different film stocks and a variety of processing methods. The result created dimensional havoc in the images. The concept of inside and outside is troubled, and the act of enclosure creates a screen on which to project the filmmaker’s own image. Selected screenings: Wavelengths Programme, Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2007

  • Searching For Wallenberg

    Drawings and text bring to life a poem by Isa Milman. …..Someone named Vera is looking for Raoul Wallenberg; he was last seen in a Soviet prison, scratching into the stone wall. Isa was born in a DP camp in Europe; she now lives in Victoria and has published a second volume of poems.