Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Mary Mary

    Presented as an autobiography, “Mary Mary” interweaves the political with the mythical; visual and textual “quotes” from other films with fragments of children’s stories; and dreams and memories with history. “M” is an ambiguous figure: an English-Canadian woman filmmaker struggling with the representational structures that form and are formed by her as she tries to make a film. At first her script eludes her. Locked in her room, she becomes tangled in a web of memories, images and stories, quotations and histories. Yet even within these confines (narrative and psychic, as well as architectural) the possibility of new readings is…

  • Matter of Expectations, A

    “A Matter of Expectations” depicts the life circumstances of women living in the Runnymede Hospital, a chronic care facility in Toronto. Longer life spans, low incomes, and a lack of housing alternatives force many women to be dependent on the health care system. This film surveys the problems confronting older women through interviews in which women discuss their feelings about aging, institutional life, the care they receive, and dying. Footage of life in the hospital with accompanying voice-overs presents a balanced view of the problematic position of older women in the 1980s.

  • Moffie Called Simon, A

    “A Moffie Called Simon” is a collage of photographs, letters, TV footage and dramatic sequences presenting the case of Simon Nkodi, a black gay activist and student leader in South Africa, who has been in jail for nearly two years. Based on letters from Nkodi and his lover, Ray, a Canadian gay journalist, “A Moffie Called Simon” also explores connections between anti-apartheid struggles and gay liberation.

  • Mondo Punk

    In the beginning were the Sex Pistols. All the ikons of the Punk Movement and more. Anarchistic anti-art calculated to offend. “It’s violent… it scared the shit out of me a couple of times.” – Freddy Pompeii, The Viletones

  • Mont Real

    “Mont Real” is a satirical view of our western civilization combining aspects of traditional and everyday life in North America. The film deals with our overpowering fantasies and with our enslavement as dependent consumers in a materialistic society. The extremely rapid development of the various visual aspects of the film corresponds with today’s hasty and short-lived deluge of information and stimulation. The film is also meant to counteract the widespread fear of foreign languages and cultures, a fear which seems to be quite common in Canada as well as in many other parts of the world.

  • Monuments

    Utilizing the poetic voice to give language and meaning to the downtown monuments of Halifax, Nova Scotia, we discover that, if they could, our monuments would destroy the human race rather than face the onward thrust of history.

  • Moose Jaw: There’s a Future in Our Past

    “Appropriate to a context of Canadian de-confederation, “Moose Jaw” is at once a statement of the filmmaker’s own maturation; a regionalist dirge on the fatality of economic dependency; an excavation of our ever-vanishing collective past; and the ironic deconstruction of all the above.” – Michael Dorland, Art Gallery of Ontario Moose Jaw was a frontier boom-town flourishing on the Canadian Pacific rail line forging Canada as a “Dominion” in the late 1800s. But as rail gave way to the jet age, Moose Jaw began to decline. Now, museums dot the landscape (along with a giant moose), and schemes to restore…

  • Moscow Summer

    “Moscow Summer” is a street-level portrait of Moscow and its people. This lyrical documentary interweaves compelling visual sequences with impromptu interviews to create a rich and realistic portrait of the city. While Moscow’s political and social turmoil form an undercurrent in the film, ultimately “Moscow Summer” is a film about love and humanity – and those are the qualities with which it has been made.

  • Multiple Choice

    “Multiple Choice” uses offbeat humour to explore the theme of poverty in the consumer society. The film tells the story of Meg Harris, a compulsive shopper who is coming to grips with her high-consumption lifestyle.

  • My Withered Tomato Friend

    “My Withered Tomato Friend” is a haunting, experimental narrative that merges the roaming voice of a battered wife with popular images of women to question the conventional ideology of representation and the denial of domestic violence. Alternating between provocative poetry and submissive prose, the voice echoes terrifying thoughts of the abused woman while gradually deconstructing – and reconstructing- manipulated found footage. “Absolutely exhilarating to watch, this is the hard edge of feminist experimental cinema.” – Piers Handling, Director, Toronto International Film Festival One Star Award, Canadian International Amateur Film Festival, 1992