Film Categories: Landscape

  • Eastern Avenue

    Filmed in Berlin, Portugal and Switzerland, “Eastern Avenue” is an experiment in approach for the maker of “Scissere.” In an attempt to explore the nature of intuition, the filmmaker traveled through familiar and foreign landscapes, using impulsive reactions as the motivation for guiding the camera through the different environments. The result is a sensuous, lyrical trip ranging from the ruins and walls of a freak civilization called Berlin, to the former edge of the earth and its endless sea beaches, Portugal. The structure and innate “story” of the film are dictated by the chronology of the experiences and the perceptions…

  • Self-Portrait in Mausoleum

    Refractions and reflections shot in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery: the half-life of death’s advance. Stained glass invokes the sublime in its filtering of light energy, a pre-cinematic cipher announcing a crack between worlds. “All the stars in heaven” radiate before expiring; the passing moment of a moment’s passing is the most elusive and hence the most beautiful. Part of Ross Lipman’s experimental documentary compilation, “the perfect heart of flux,” also available for distribution through CFMDC.

  • Daybreak

    Inverted Super 8 and video footage paints a hauntingly beautiful portrait of Saskatchewan’s northern forests. “Daybreak” is an attempt to strip different images down to their basic elements, to examine their photographic possibilities, and their connection to a larger “Canadian” identity. Original score by Jason Moberg. Selected screenings: Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival (Toronto, ON), 2011; Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, BC), 2011

  • Phantoms

    “A study of the incongruous and iconic suspended monorail in Wuppertal Germany. Shot on super 8 and finished on 35mm film, ‘Phantoms’ expertly employs the exaggerated grainy texture of the emulsion to suggest a netherworld out of time, both science fiction and ancient history, while an accompanying text muses on the vanity and folly suggested by the mysterious structure.” – Kate MacKay, Images Festival Text by Ryan Kamstra. Financial assistance provided by the Ontario Arts Council.

  • Genesee

    Shot in the Genesee Valley of New York State on regular 8mm to commemorate the last rolls of Kodachrome. The colours of the leaves and the film stock are augmented by orange colour filters, boosting the contrast and highlighting the rich saturated yellows, reds and orange of stock and season.

  • Bliss Out

    A light-drenched black and white roadmovie, charting interior and exterior peregrinations made through the City of Angels in 2003/04. (Antimatter Film Festival catalogue, 2009)

  • Towards a Vanishing Point

    Footage shot in Coba, Mexico and the Siwa Oasis in Egypt and a found film from California serve as inspiration for a series of sketches on the notion of the vanishing point. Commissioned for LIFT’s 30th Anniversary Celebration.

  • Sing As We Go

    The city’s wavering light is its pulse and its extinguishment. A voice booms out with unsure finality, on unfirm foundations.

  • Off Route 2

    The scene of a car accident serves as a backdrop to an exploration of trauma and the often-anticlimactic aftermath of personal tragedy. A woman hangs inverted in silence, inhabiting the space of wildlife in the forest. This is as much a performance of endurance as it is a fictional construct; the execution of the film demanded that the artist hang upside-down from a seatbelt for extended periods of time in sub-zero weather.

  • sea series #10

    A response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, “sea series #10” was shot at Beachfront Park near the Pickering nuclear generating station in Ontario, Canada and processed in part with water derived from the lake.