Film Categories: Literature

  • Her 13th Incarnation

    Told through a montage of personal photographs and video images, backed with dynamic, cutting-edge prose/poetics, “Her 13th Incarnation” is one Black, queer woman’s exploration of gender, sexuality, and the infinite fluidity of identity and desire.

  • Remedy

    Some kind of defense mechanism kept me from appreciating just how horrible he was. I had never been depressed before, sad – heartbroken – bored – yes, but not depressed. I guess it took me a few weeks to stop pretending that there must be some mistake. (LH)

  • PoeTix

    PoeTix is radical and mundane Three word poems Edited into perversion and delirium Verbal refrigerator poetry Following Aristotle’s dramatic structure Creating a heap for really cheap

  • Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The

    Using the cut-out style of animation, I tried to marry the classic engravings of Gustave Dore to the classic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge through a classic narrator: Orson Welles. It’s a long opium dream of the old Mariner (Welles) who wantonly killed the albatross and suffered the pains of the damned for it. (LJ) Original narration by Orson Welles; made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. “The film, far from being a mere visual accompaniment to the poem, has an integrity of its own. Throughout the film, serpents, butterflies and other creatures from Jordan’s…

  • Lesson, The

    A close look at the hilarious representation of language inspired by the absurd, existentialist writings of Eugene Ionesco.

  • Helpless

    Based on a tale from the work of Maritime folklorist Helen Creighton, “Helpless” is set in a fogbound world of superstition and magic. When a strange and terrifying illness befalls Walton Collins’ son Mortimer, the fisherman turns to a mysterious stranger with elemental powers to heal the helpless boy. An unsettling tale from the past, “Helpless” mines the dark realms of sorcery and desire. “Helpless” is conceived as both a cultural film work and an homage to Helen Creighton. The script for “Helpless” comes out of a collaboration with respected visual artist Eric Walker. A native Nova Scotian, Maritime history…

  • Almost Forgot My Bones

    A lyrical video-poem which depicts the transformation of an African-Canadian woman’s identity as she goes in search of her roots. In order to find herself she must travel past skin into bone – to the root, the secret inside identity. Almost forgot my bones In this home without no mirrors Almost forgot my bones In this home without no mirrors Of myself, my skin, my kin, my hidden Of myself, my skin, my kin, my hidden

  • nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

    ASL is not English: it has a syntax of its own. Remaining true to e.e. cummings’ vision, the poem was transliterated metaphorically into the original syntax of the ASL rather than the SEE (Signed Exact English) to express the poet’s linguistic play in words. The poetic hand movements of the ASL/Art-Sign is to emphasize the dexterous quality of cummings’ perspective, to innovate a different kind of visual interpretation, best suitable for an avant-garde poem. This film, based on e.e. cummings’ poem, presents a penetrating, political-linguistic expression of humanity in a twisting, intertwining multi-choreographed collaboration of the several artists in Art-Sign,…

  • Villanelle

    Elizabeth Lewis’s “Villanelle” is based on a poem of the same name by Earle Birney, one of Canada’s best-known poets. In a live action segment preceding the animation, Birney introduces the poem, describing the circumstances that led him to write it. He tells of how he spent one summer of the 1960s at Bowen island, north of Vancouver. During the week he was alone. But on the week-ends, friends and students would join him. Only one of those friends, a promising young student named Betty Lamert, was able to join him on his two-mile swims in the icy bay water.…

  • Sons of Captain Poetry

    This “fantasy documentary” tries to blend Canadian poet bp Nichol’s everyday world with the images of characters in his poetry. Sequences include a section on Plunkett, Saskatchewan, where the poet grew up, and scenes of him discussing “concrete poetry.” In the film bp Nichol performs several sound poems. There are also scenes showing his involvement with Coach House Press and Therafields.