Film Categories: Poetry

  • MixedUP

    Part testimonial/part confessional. What are the lines between the facts of who I am and the fiction of what I can become? Mixed↑ is a reclaimed book of genesis: a manifesto that collides the wildly diverse elements of being queer, mixed and different in a world socialized around the construction of race, gender and orientation. Mixed↑ follows Howard J Davis aka Haui in his feature film directing debut, as he combats the isolation of being BIPOC and LGTBQ+ and helps to normalize the existence of being “other”. Featuring Haui’s biological and found family including: actress/activist Tantoo Cardinal; stage and screen…

  • Sonnet (for the dear ones)

    A short film poem influenced by traditional sonnet structure and tone. Sonnet as elegy, a lament for the loss of close others whose deaths always arrive too soon. Presence and memory interwoven with grief, the transitoriness of daily life, the moments when the loved one appears in an imagined exchange.

  • Kick That Habit Man!

    The phrase “kick that habit man”, which is also a poem by Brion Gysin, is re-arranged in every possible order in this clever blend of sound, image, and optical printing.

  • Landfall

    “Landfall” was shot in Prince Edward Island, near the family home on the Northumberland Strait. The original footage, shot in 1974, was a kind of interactive, camera “dance” with the environment. Poetry became important when the footage was later superimposed onto its own mirror-image, to help direct the viewer away from the luring yet limited world of image-identification. “I Thought There Were Limits,” by Quebec poet D.G. Jones, w as used to encourage the viewer to reject Newtonian notions of space and time, and to conceptualize the film’s interplay between absence, desire, and presence. Eventually, the limitation of text as…

  • Layton Symphony

    The film conjures up images and sounds of Canadian poet Irving Layton through various media sources. The subject is the image of Layton and the surface of the film image. The footage was optically printed and hand-processed. “I find these images disturbing; I see my own death in them.” – Irving Layton

  • The Thought That Counts

    The film follows Davis, grappling with profound grief and illness while struggling with memories of his late mother. His devoted husband attempts to uplift him with a heartfelt gift: a home to raise butterflies. As they navigate unexpected challenges in nurturing the delicate creatures (the cocoons already hatched), Davis confronts his past and finds solace in the transformative power of memories and the healing journey of letting go.

  • The Years

    THE YEARS is a poetry film exploring life stages through various ages as experienced by different actors in a non-chronological order and time frame. Historical Super 8mm film footage mixes with digital recordings as the poem is voiced by the filmmaker/author. Questions of impermanence and the instability of time frame the histories indicated by the filmed images gathered by the artist over years of recorded witnessing.

  • The Sky After Rain (Payam Feili)

    Based on a poem by exiled gay Iranian poet, Payam Feili, written after the arrest of his boyfriend during Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests.

  • and the story remains

    After years of silence, a woman returns to a memory she was once forbidden to recall. As she develops forgotten images, the past surfaces in fragments of light, grain, and the slow emergence of a face. The film lingers between past and present, exploring whether enforced silence can wound more deeply than the trauma itself.

  • Passing Shadows

    Passing Shadows attempts the seeming impossible: to travel the inner pathways of poet Andrew Suknaski’s creative impulses. The film traces in detail the painstaking, methodical and happenstance search Suknaski undertakes to discover the images and the emotions that fill his poetry. He wanders along bookshelves, across faces and into shadows pursuing the moments and symbols of truth that Suknaski strives to translate into words.