Film Categories: Literature

  • Every Day 1, 2, 3

    “Every Day 1, 2, 3″ is a set of three small artist zines about the relation between film and life, living and filmmaking as Sternberg sees it. The books reference different experiences of time respectively: 1. Daily, repetitive; 2. Random, contingent; 3. Cumulative. Book 3’s images document Sternberg’s studio: film strips, cans of film, editing equipment, optical printer, and Bolex camera. Price: $15.00 + applicable taxes & shipping CREDITS: Text and Photographs: Barbara Sternberg Size: 5″ x 5 1/4” Pages: 28 p. per booklet Year of Production: 2016 Designer: Ann O’Callaghan Production: Shawn Samson Country of Production: Canada Edition Size:…

  • Antigone

    In “Antigone” we re-visit the twisted shapes of the Master in his various get-ups: father, king, detective, god, stats, text, son…film director. Also featuring a familiar mother-lover combo. “…A blast of fresh air on the experimental scene, this cheeky, post-modern story about the story rips apart any pretensions we may hold about the avant-garde, the Canadian film industry, or narrative itself.” – Festival of Festivals “Antigone” rolls out black and white, silent-movie style, with a blast of horns and the mock-mournful strains of the violin. Slapstick sounds and Popovich’s narration prick the pretensions of those involved in retelling the [Oedipus…

  • Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey

    An immersive cinematic poem of a seven year journey of return, Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey weaves together stories of near-death and mystical experience in Andalucia. When I was 19 I set out, hoping I could learn the meaning of life by “experiencing everything.” I bought a car for 20 marks in a cafe in Ulm. I spray painted it yellow and green and drove it from Holland to Romania to Spain, sleeping in the back seat in a red blanket. Driving down to Malaga, at the crest of the mountains, the brakes went out. As the car sped…

  • ghosts

    Ghosts is an experimental video that uses illustration and digitized 8mm film to explore concepts of childhood, sexuality, chrononormativity, indoctrination, and (metaphorical) death. The video disrupts the boundaries of past/present/future, birth/life/death, and humans/ghosts/monsters and encourages a dynamic engagement with such spaces. Ghosts is based on the novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, that many children in Canada read in school. The novel centres on a post-apocalyptic future where people, animals and other living forms that present physical differences are ousted to ‘the fringes’ by a strict Christian society. Within that society, a group of children develops a telepathic ability, a…

  • ARTIFACT (circa 2006)

    The archaeology of Identity. Consider a world where all human communications are represented by numbers, a digital world. Imagine a future archaeologist finding a DV cassette from hundreds of years ago (a real found object, circa 2006, full length and uncut). Imagine trying to decode this ancient digital object, codecs unknown, obsolete, hardware long lost. Crack the code? Available algorithms scan, databases compare, construct, deconstruct, reconstruct the artifact. 2006, the dawn of self-by-numbers, digitized identity. What human fragments, fugitive narratives, remain? Do we have a future history? What will the algorithms decide? All bookings of this film include a free…

  • Le Dormeur Du Val

    Art essay video, free interpretation of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Le Dormeur Du Val”, aimed at pointing the absurdity of war: through history and continents, no matter their race or religion, soldiers, instruments of the authorities, represent one and only person: another victim.

  • Flâneurs – Street Rambles

    Between film projects and following the birth of his daughter, a Canadian in Paris (Matthew Lancit) must confront his slacker lifestyle and decide if there is something in it worth passing on to the next generation, or if he is better off getting a job. In search of the remaining traces of flâneurs (19th Century wanderers of Paris), he takes his daughter on a series of poetic strolls in which he assumes the role of a contemporary flâneur and crosses the path of people who help reveal the relevance of such a figure today. In the movement back and forth…

  • One last night without sadness

    Fleeing the temptations of the city, two young marginals squat a cabin in the heart of the forest. Torn between their desire to live and their impulse to die, they live a love story out of time.

  • Sophie’s Letter

    During the composition of the letter to her abusive father, Sophie identifies with her inner wounded child (Little Sophie) and gradually finds what she needs to grow beyond the limits and boundaries that were burned into her psyche so many years earlier.

  • Potamkin

    In 1933, at age 33, Harry Alan Potamkin died of complications related to starvation, at a time when he was one of the world’s most respected film critics. In his writings, he advocated for a cinema that would simultaneously embrace the fractures and polyphony of modern life and the equitable social vision of left radical politics. This film-biography is assembled out of distorted fragments of films on which he had written, an impression of erupting consciousness. At the Odessa steps, trampling gives breath to the child. The bullet miraculously reforms the face. The Cossacks march backwards, retreating unseen into their…