Film Categories: history

  • Still Light

    A pregnant moment from Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” triggers this haunting exploration of lineage, memory, and loss. Using a combination of 16mm and Super 8 film, “Still Light” journeys through a forest of old photographs, shadowed by the ethereal voice of Kim Novak.

  • 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.

  • King of the Jews

    “King of the Jews” is a film about fear and transcendence. Utilizing Hollywood movies, 1950s educational films, personal home movies and religious films spanning the history of cinema, the filmmaker depicts his childhood fear of Jesus Christ. These childhood recollections are a point of departure for larger issues, including the roots of Christian anti-Semitism and the need for forgiveness and healing.

  • acrobat, the

    Inspired in part by a poem by Toronto poet Ryan Kamstra, “the acrobat” is a consideration of the relationship of gravity and politics – the beauty and necessity of rising up, but also, perhaps, the significance of allowing oneself to fall. If the force of gravity is in relation to both mass and proximity, how does the force of politics resonate across space and time?

  • Shadow Tracing

    A young Chinese woman challenged by identity and history, but enchanted with retro filmmaking in a digital world, makes a life decision – to purchase a vintage, hand-crank movie camera. The camera recalls images of wacky “Hollywood Chinatowns” from Hollywood films made in Colonialist times. While examining it, and dreaming of becoming a cameraman herself, she discovers the marks of former Chinese owners, and she envisions historical scenes that the camera may have seen in China. Her wishes are fulfilled as she films the streets of her own hood, in Toronto’s Asian community.

  • Lunch with Fela

    “Lunch with Fela” is the filmmaker’s response to the passing of his last parent, Fela Ravett. Utilizing a combination of DV footage shot during her stay at a nearby nursing facility, excerpts from previously made 16mm films, animation sequences, plus remaining family memorabilia, the film renders the presence and absence of a much loved parent. “Lunch with Fela” is the eighth film in a series that addresses the complexities of family history and Jewish cultural identity.

  • 3 X 16

    These three short films consist of perceptive depictions of a public square in Lima, the view from his mother’s rooftop, and work at the Toronto Film Festival revision department. The filmmaker used 16 mm as documentary format. Each film in this series is almost three-minutes long, which is the length of one roll of 16 mm film. The entire film uses in-camera editing, therefore all the editing decisions were made on location.

  • Safety

    From our disaster-proof Eastern cities – through vast, impenetrable grain fields – to the fortress shores of our Pacific Coast – America is finally safe.

  • Moose Jaw: There’s a Future in Our Past (DVD Release)

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. “Appropriate to a context of Canadian de-confederation, MOOSE JAW is at once a statement of the filmmaker’s own maturation; a regionalist dirge on the fatality of economic dependency; an excavation of our ever-vanishing collective past; and the ironic deconstruction of all the above.” – Michael Dorland, Art Gallery of Ontario Moose Jaw was a frontier boom-town flourishing on the Canadian Pacific rail line forging Canada as a “Dominion” in the late 1800s. But as rail gave way to the jet age, Moose Jaw began to decline. Now, museums dot the landscape (along…

  • Out & About with Brewer & Berg – A Multidimensional Travelogue

    “Out & About with Brewer & Berg – A Multidimensional Travelogue” is a philosophical travelogue of Europe with two zany guys in an amazing filmed documentary of their vision quest in search of a new mythology that includes gay and lesbian consciousness. “Out & About with Brewer & Berg” is where Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell meet Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It’s where “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” meets Carlos Castaneda and David Attenborough. It’s where “My Dinner with André” meets the “On the Road” films with Crosby and Hope. Replete with riveting graphics, insightful quotations and a…