Film Categories: history

  • Selected Works by the Loop Collective: Volume 1

    A selection of films produced between 2005-2011 by members of The Loop Collective, a Toronto-based group of independent filmmakers, musicians, dancers and multimedia artists who strive to connect cinema to related interdisciplinary art forms. 1. fugitive l(i)ght 2. c: won eyed jail 3.Thaw 4. Parícutin 5.Quanta 6. Shapes Eat Shapes 7. Levitas 8. Spiders in Eden 9. The Changing Light 10. Christ Church – Saint James 11. Thought Form 12. Morning 13. Many Glimpses 14. Movement / Stasis (documentation)

  • We Are Animals

    In this alternate-history fable set in the 1980’s AIDS Crisis, a closeted young man is thrust into the midst of an anti-government coup and finds that the animal within is stronger than the monsters that oppress.

  • Championship

    At a wrestling tournament, a young competitor faces match upon match. Referees converge on the scene. The crowd’s attention wanes and focuses with the intensity of the bout. Sounds drift in: a psychic piano enters over fast and short breaths. This is a contest of past and future. It will be decided in the ring.

  • Spirits In Season

    Lily Dale is a spiritualist community in Chautauqua County, New York. Pilgrims and tourists swarm the hamlet in summer, but in the fall, Lily Dale becomes a more intimate setting for spectral communions. This film explores the town’s Leolyn Woods, pet cemetery, Inspiration Stump, and Fairy Trail. Music by Nate Wooley.

  • Brébeuf

    A study of St. Ignace, in Huronia, where the ethnographers and Jesuit missionaries, later saints, Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, were killed in 1649.

  • INTER-MEZZO

    INTER-MEZZO is a documentary of performance as well as a performance of documentary. Through a triptych, which treats the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo, faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR! plays with the biography documentary form, dealing with issues of voice / gender / representation as Stephen traces his westernization, the discovery and silencing of his voice, and people’s reactions…

  • Field of Stones

    “Have you ever seen anything that looked so out of place that is haunted your subconscious and you could never let it go? Well I have… Field of Stones is my personal 43:17 minute journey inspired by a strange cemetery location that took me deep into a study of religion and science. Are the two connected? Is there something more to our lives and what is next after this life? These are just some of the questions that I would eventually find answers to as well as answers to questions I was unaware I was even asking. His journey changed…

  • Arrhythmia

    Footage from a cardiac catheterization, intertwined with a recording of a telephone conversation and old 8mm home films, tell the story of a mother’s conflicting desire to escape a poor marriage by returning to her homeland, despite the possibility of being victimized at the hands of the government upon her return due to a past incident. “Arrhythmia” is an intimate piece about family, distance and identity.

  • Republic of God

    Expressed through a collage of cropped video images that unify to create three alternating cubist video canvases, “Republic of God” is a satirical portrayal of the relationship between ruler and subject in a day of political turmoil set in a fictitious nation.

  • This Film Has No Commercial Value

    Film made by John Kneller with a sound design by John Shipman. It focuses on the environment using time-lapse cinematography as a means to capture phenomena that is impossible to see with the naked eye. Automated pan, tilt and zoom mechanics were custom-built by the filmmaker to augment the time-lapse techniques. The resulting imagery is a hyper-reality of landscapes transformed by means of the camera’s mechanical mediation. The sound design was created from naturally recorded sound phenomena and musical performances. The Romantic musical elements are reminiscent of lyrical depictions of nature and environment. The deliberate mediation of the sound and…