Film Categories: Portraits

  • Cutlery

    Over close – ups of cutlery in drawers and drying racks a reading of a short poem of the same title is read by the poet. In it is a lament for a past not fully recognized and a tradition that escapes the reader’s present situation…the longed for marriage groom which he will never be. Humorous and poignant at the same time, the past coincides in the present like a knife.

  • Spanish Tale, A

    The story of a family and their friend Paco who fled Spain after the Civil War and the threat of imprisonment under Franco’s regime. Told by an English voice-over of the grown daughter of the same family whose photo album we peruse as she recounts their harrowing escape to France and Montreal as a five year old child. The collision of cultures, the clash of beliefs, an idealist’s exile and how the shadow of the past interferes on subsequent events.

  • Collagist, The

    This charming and humorous animation is a collaboration with artist Marc Bell. “THE COLLAGIST” focuses on Bell’s hands as he assembles one of his works. This dynamic two dimensional piece incorporates drawings, paper cut-outs and looped animations.

  • Michael Snow Up Close

    “MICHAEL SNOW UP CLOSE” was produced on the occasion of The Michael Snow Project, a major, career-spanning, multi-venue retrospective of the artist. The documentary celebrates the multi-faceted shape of Snow’s creative genius, including glimpses of his work in painting, sculpture, film, photo-works, performance, installations, and holography. Discussions with Snow, original documentation of his music and performance work, and excerpts from his avant-garde films, are complemented by interviews with filmmakers Jonas Mekas and Bruce Elder, Snow’s dealer Av Isaacs, the architect Eb Zeidler, museum director Pierre Théberge, curator Louise Dompierre, and others. A deliberately conventional documentary about a deliberately unconventional artist.

  • Blue Covers

    When the adult survivor of sexual abuse meets her lover, she struggles to remain present. She must remember that the hands of her lover are not the hands of her childhood abuser, and so, the separation between past and present begins to blur. Narrative and experimental, “Blue Covers” is an emotional, psychological and spiritual journey. A compelling look at the effects of sexual trauma, this short film is for survivors of abuse and those who care for them. “Blue Covers” was made possible through the generous support of San Francisco Women Against Rape and proj-ect PRO:JECT.

  • Displaced View, The

    “The Displaced View” traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history are revealed. Utilizing an innovative combination of experimental, dramatic and documentary forms, the film emerges as a deeply moving and compassionate love letter. Just as the official history of the Japanese Canadians has been thrown into question, so does the film’s fictionalized narrative question doumentary as truth.

  • My Own Private Lower Post

    “My Own Private Lower Post” is the story of Duane Gastant’ Aucoin, a two-spirited Tlingit, as he seeks to understand how his mother’s trials at Lower Post Resident School have influenced his life. As she shares her story, he comes to understand how he too is a survivor. Haa Koosteeyi (Our Tlingit Way) is where mother and son find the strength to overcome and truly survive. “My Own Private Lower Post” won an Honourary Mention (runner-up) for best BC Short at the 2009 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. This groundbreaking video has been called “enjoyable, emotional and historic” (Whitehorse Star review).…

  • Lacuna

    Lacuna: 1. an empty space or a missing part; a gap; an absence. 2. a discontinuity in an anatomical structure. Selected screenings: WNDX Festival, Winnipeg, MB, 2009; Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, Montreal, QC, 2009

  • House of Olga, The

    The roots of invasive vines threaten the preservation of Casco Antiguo’s declining heritage buildings in the historic district of Panama City. While the area continues to gentrify rapidly, Olga quietly tends to the plants amidst her home of ruins. “THE HOUSE OF OLGA” documents an unorthodox traveler in search of the perfect dwelling. Spanish with English subtitles.

  • Northland: Long Journey

    A film about environment, family and justice. “Northland: Long Journey” is an evocative meditation on filmmaker Edie Steiner’s quest for new truths regarding her father’s death from occupational illness three decades prior. The film revisits an early National Film Board of Canada film, where her mining father is posed as a heroic worker. He later died from exposures to workplace toxins, but his death was officially denied to be related to his work environment. A generation later, new scientific evidence amended the original legal and medical judgments, and the process of making the film became an appeal for justice. Filmed…