Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Cleaning For Love

    Sent to Canada under a false identity her husband created for her, Colombian-born Luna finds herself working as a cleaning lady. She tries to get along with her co-workers, whom she considers economic refugees like herself; but her upper-class attitude alienates her. Luna fantasizes about the soap operas she used to watch. However, Chon Li, whom Mexican boss Manuel manipulates with promises of improving her status, forces Luna back to reality. Rarely is life as squeaky clean as soap, and Luna gradually starts scrubbing away the layer of grime that seems to coat everything. She learns from Abdel, a Sufi…

  • Imprint

    “Louise Bourque’s ‘Imprint’ focuses obsessively on home-movie images of her family’s house, which seems gloomily oppressive, almost filling the frame; she repeats the images with various alterations – tinted, bleached, partly scraped away – as if attacking the place, turning its darkness into light.” – Fred Camper, The Reader, Chicago, April 16 1999 “‘Imprint’… throttles and exhausts a particular memory-image (a family on a porch in an ambiguous position – good-bye/hello, reuniting/reinforcing/celebrating?) and traces its corrosion and dissolution even as it intensifies it physically. Dyes, zip-a-toning, a weird daguerrotype shiny effect, and ripping makes for a very concrete trip.” –…

  • People in the House, The

    “‘The People in the House’ examines the dynamics of a family in crisis and questions the role of religious devotion in the perpetuation of dysfunction. The exterior of the house is never seen, and the family’s anxiety, as is often the case, plays out within the confines of four walls. Filmed with a dreamy, surreal quality, ‘The People in the House’ dwells within the tension between harmony and chaos.” – Liz Czach, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue, Canada, 1995 Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Film, The 14th Uppsala Short Film Festival, Sweden, 1995; Special Jury Award, The 31st Yorkton Short…

  • Jours en fleurs

    “Jours en fleurs” is a reclamation of flower-power in which images of trees in springtime bloom are subjected to the floriferous ravages of menarcheal substance in a gestation of decay. The title is based on an expression from my coming-of-age in Acadian French Canada where girls would refer to having their menstrual periods as “être dans ses fleurs.” As a result of incubation in menstrual blood for several months, the original images inscribed on the emulsion undergo violent alterations. The shedding of the unfertilized womb depredates the fertilized blossoms and substitutes its own dark beauty. – LB “Those few shorts…

  • Just Words

    “Using as it’s text Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I,’ this shocking gift incorporates optically printed home movie footage and an eerily slick close-up of actress Patricia MacGeachy as she rants at lightening speed Beckett’s words about home, family and the confines and alienation associated with being a woman.” – Program notes, Madcat Film Festival, San Francisco, 2001 “A 10-minute tour de force […]. In ‘Just Words,’ Bourque intercuts footage of her mother and her sisters with a performance by actress Patricia MacGeachy of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’; the result is unnerving (as all Beckett is) yet touching (as some Beckett is…

  • Everything

    A woman rants about god, bad haircuts, fame and money, while surreal images of her suburban life unfold beside her. Based on a poem by Janette Platana.

  • Toraanisqatsi

    Leif Harmsen’s remake of Godrey Reggio’s classic independent film “Koyaanisqatsi” was shot on Super 8 film entirely on location in Toronto by invitation to the Splice This! 2005 Super 8 Film Festival. Bob Wiseman wrote and performed the evocative instrumental soundtrack. “Toraanisqatsi” is an environmental thriller set in the Toronto of the 21st century, a city taken over by cars, fast food, electronic billboards, jetliners, industry and pollution. It is seen through the terrified eyes of a living breathing human. All transportation for this film was done by bicycle or foot.

  • Memo to Pic Desk

    An idiosyncratic look at staging in news photography, using materials from the archives of a Toronto daily. Moral codes, delinquency and autonomy are pulled into an altered coherence, as vintage photos are examined next to their type-written paper trail. Financial assistance provided by the Ontario Arts Council. Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Short Film, Lusanne Underground Film Festival, 2007; Toronto International Film Festival, 2006; Jury’s Choice Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 2007; San Francisco International Film Festival, 2007; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007; Big Muddy Film Festival, 2007

  • DAS OVO (Ovo – das Video) | THE OVO (Ovo – the Video)

    “It’s not about how a drag queen moves, it’s what she sets in motion.” – Ovo Maltine, 1966-2005 Christoph Josten was Ovo Maltine. She died on February 8, 2005 at Berlin’s Auguste Viktoria hospital, eleven week after suddenly being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. She had lived with the HIV virus for 13 year. “Ovo (the egg)” – read one obituary – “lay down in Berlin’s nest of queens and brooded on a number of political projects: a hotline for gay victims of assault, Act Up, AIDS benefit events, the legalisation of marijuana, the recognition of prostitution as a profession, transgender…

  • Butch or Consequences

    Louise, an old-school butch, falls in love with a pretend TV lesbian and in her desperate need to be with her she participates in a fictional make-over show, Inside Out: Deviant Dyke to Diva. Louise, reveals her new marriage approved look to her local dyke march when suddenly it all starts to go wrong, or, some would say, it all gets right.