Film Categories: Landscape

  • Reinventing the Unconventional: The Hearn Generating Station

    Nestled next to downtown Toronto looms the abandoned Hearn Generating Station. Thirty years after it was decommissioned, art director Jorn Weisbrodt envisioned an entire arts festival, Luminato, taking place in the Hearn. We hear about the challenges of reinventing such an unconventional space, from politics to the will of the Toronto people.

  • everyday star

    Everyday states of being and decay are observed through the infinite scope of the cosmos and the restorative light which emanates from it, driving cinematic and photographic impulses.

  • The Solitary Life of the Stoic

    The ‘Solitary Life of the Stoic’ is a short documentary project that juxtaposes the formidable life story of a dignified woman in her nineties with imposing architectural structures and expressive imagery. Shot in Central Europe and integrated with portraits of Leah Laufer in Toronto, this film aligns visual poetry with the wisdom of an old friend, candid confessions of life at her stage and the gratitude of a Holocaust survivor.

  • TRANS-LEITMOTIF: A Cinematic Portrait of Toronto + Hamilton

    Following in the tradition of iconic experimental cinema such as Dziga Vertov’s ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ and Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, Trans-Leitmotif provides a visual landscape of Toronto and Hamilton at this point in their historical legacy. Drawing on broad themes such as architectural monumentality and formalism, social/historical identities and cultural/traditional extinction, this film is both personal and anthropological in its scope. Filmed over a two-year period, it studies these distinct cities primarily through the lens of a 16mm Bolex camera, lending them a visual archive and subsequently, an inspired aesthetic vision of time encapsulated. With a mesmerizing musical accompaniment…

  • BLU In YOU

    Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and…

  • Flying to Nowhere

    A flock of seagulls persist in the senseless attempt to move forward against heavy winds coming off the ocean.

  • Senescent Vivarium

    Bordering on the fantastic, “Senescent Vivarium” represents four distinct seasons created by plants and insects selected to imitate authentic biospheres. These macro worlds are architectural masters of their own domain yet defy traditional still life representations. Transient narratives of familiar ecological cycles are pushed further into supernatural territory by the effects of hand processed 16mm black-and-white film, and a deeply atmospheric sound score.

  • 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.