Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • May 13th

    “May 13th” is concerned with a college student’s daily routine at a recreational centre and the ensuing violent assault by a stranger. The voices of four women, expressing their own feelings and relating their own experiences, respond to the act of violence.

  • Class Queers

    “Class Queers” is an intimate and compelling documentary about teenagers and homophobia. It is an account of three gay and lesbian kids from Toronto who weave their way in and out of the education system as a result of the harassment they encounter. “Class Queers” begins mid-way through the school year, as the viewer is introduced to the Triangle Program, an alternative high school classroom for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans youth. Located in the basement of a church in downtown Toronto, it serves as a life raft for the kids who are lucky enough to find their way there.…

  • My Mother at the Consulate

    “My Mother at the Consulate” is a montage-based exploration of absence and presence and the passage of time. It is an addition to a series of personal pieces about the filmmaker’s mother.

  • 9/11 Remembered

    The tragic event of 9/11 has left an indelible impact on the collective consciousness. This film is a way of revealing many people remembering and thinking of 9/11. Universally understood and accepted as a trigger for the memories, the sound of the jet engine roaring triggers the memories and the film ends with my continuing sob. This film is one way of expressing how I hear, feel, and see my own memories of that day which has left an unresolved sound in my mind.

  • Ride

    “Ride” was filmed during the Friends for Life Bike Rally, an annual fundraiser for the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation (www.pwatoronto.org). It was filmed entirely with a Super 8 camera pipe-clamped to the bicycle basket of Leif Harmsen’s Canadian Tire Special, over 700 km between Toronto and Montreal. The blissful and high energy six-day event whips the many riders into top shape and inspires many others to generously support a great charity. It also connects two of Canada’s greatest cities with simple, environmentally friendly pedal power.

  • Term, The

    A lovely and spare animated film illustrating the poem, “The Term,” by William Carlos Williams. The film is an homage to the work of Williams and to the school of Imagist Poetry, which he founded and best exemplifies. The filmmaker chose this particular poem because of the power of the imagery, the constant metamorphosis, the musicality of the words and the gentle humanistic quality of the message. All these things lend themselves well to film: particularly to the style of animation she has developed. The animation is hand-drawn pencil on paper, fully animated twelve drawings per second. The drawings illustrate…

  • John Porter Sampler

    John Porter uses film as visual art, much like painting or sculpture,. Most of his 300 films are silent, very short and made in series, such aas landscapes, cityscapes, popular rituals, crowd documentaries, local histories, toy stories and “Camera Dances” in which he performs for the camera. Unlike most filmmakers, John shows his original films (no copies) and incorporates performance into the exhibition by miming in front of the screen, moving a hand-held projector around the room, and talking with the audience during the his films. He has been invited to many university film production classes to demonstrate a different…

  • Concrete and Sunshine

    “Concrete and Sunshine” is a documentary about the human geography of incarceration which challenges the function of the prison system. Arguing that an underlying problem of incarceration is the isolation of the individual from the rest of society, “Concrete and Sunshine” focuses on interviews with men housed in 24-hours of solitary confinement in California’s “super-max” prison, Pelican Bay State Prison. Cousino questions the motives for the use of solitary confinement and the impact it has on the individuals celled within. Additionally, “Concrete and Sunshine” relates the penal system’s use of solitary to the economic isolation experienced by both communities that…

  • Soul Circus

    Dylan Griffin ventures into a world of chaos and beauty when he takes a job on the production crew of the world’s only African-American circus. Armed with a Super 8 camera, he documents the last day of a cross-USA tour as ringmaster Casual Cal talks about life with the Soul Circus.

  • Come Alive

    A mock commercial which documents the growing problem of pollution on the beaches and deserts of Baja, Mexico. We truly are a “Pepsi generation.”