Film Categories: found footage

  • Cleveland: The Resurrected Arcade

    “The dreaming collective…through the arcades, communes with its own insides” – Walter Benjamin. A visit to the restored arcade in post-industrial Cleveland, the piece uses architectural footage and archival audio to explore the city’s repeated efforts in urban renewal.

  • Father Knows Father Best

    Utilizing damaged film loops and photograms, “Father Knows Father Best” plays off an old found-footage print of the American situation comedy to highlight a dysfunctional family paradigm. Malcolm Goldstein’s experimental violin soundings exploit the atonal dialogue.

  • Slumberparty 2018

    Slumberparty 2018 is a remake of a 1984 Super 8 film called Slumberparty made by the Positive Pornographers, a mostly queer collective of Toronto-based artists, activists and sex-workers. Commissioned by A-Space Gallery’s “Developing a Women’s Erotic Language on Film” workshop, Slumberparty was made as a direct intervention in Toronto’s feminist porn debates. They wrote, “we didn’t set out to make a work of art. We set out to make something that might turn us on. Join us for what one previewer called “Mary Poppins’ first lesbian orgy. Slumberparty screened twice in public in 1984 then disappeared until 2016, when the…

  • Welcome to the World

    A daring film starring Albert M. Chan (GOTHAM, GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST, 30 ROCK) as a troubled man who records a video message for his pregnant sister. Taking place on the brink of a new life, this compelling film explores what it means to be human and the courage it takes to be fully alive. Drawing its power and immediacy from its first-person confessional style, the film presents, in one continuous take, the journey of one man’s awakening from isolation back to humanity. Welcome to the World won the award for Best Performance (actor Albert M. Chan) at the 2019…

  • Elegant Flower

    ‘Elegant Flower’ is a diaspora story that follows the life of a Hungarian refugee over the course of his 60th birthday weekend. Burdened by the separation of his beloved family and little sister, Zoltán Király engages in activities to bridge this chasm of geography and time. Incorporating beautiful 8mm found film and distinctive Toronto landscapes, one is given a subtle revelation and connection into this quiet and passionate man’s internal struggle.

  • Video Home System

    ‘Video Home System’ traces the convergence of popular culture and politics in Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s. This video showcases the connections between pop culture and nationalism, and how bootleg economies kept the cinema industry alive during periods of censorship. Image description: A young man sits at a desk behind a pile of VHS tapes, illuminated by a desk lamp. The wall behind him is vivid green.

  • Three Casualties

    “Three Casualties” is an investigation of three movie scenes, showing stunts that lead to the deaths of the stunt doubles performing them. In some cases these scenes remained in the films whereby the audience witnessed an actual death on screen while simultaneously watching a fictional one.

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Wayward Emulsions

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from stray reels of 35mm film. Winner, Experimental Short Grand Jury Prize, Slamdance Festival 2019

  • Sworded Love

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of star-crossed swordsmen are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from a stray reel of a 35mm kung fu action film.