Film Categories: Portraits

  • You Take Care Now

    “Fleming’s perilous travelogue recites, in first person voice-over, a tale of two cities. The first is Bridiski, where the patent sexism of her surround leads her to seek refuge in the hotel room of her unscrupulous tour guide. The second moves closer to home – where the simplest of street crossings becomes a nightmare journey of dark collisions, broken bones and ambulance drives.” – Mike Hoolboom

  • Zum Ditter

    A rare document of amateur sound poet and “stunter” extraordinaire, Allan MacKay, exploiting the greatest name in music – Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799). In this extemporary performance piece, camera and actor develop a tight rapport like two instruments in a jazz band. Nothing is rehearsed except the finale, itself discovered by accident. The narrative structure of the piece establishes a subversive dialetic as bizarre as the filmmaker’s own piano punk-tuations, added later. “Quite interesting – quite interesting indeed.” – Allan McFee, Eclectic Circus, CBC 1979

  • 62 Injections

    Get up, shower, shave, coffee, right? How about get up, jab finger, draw blood, give yourself a needle? Again and again … This film presents the daily routine of the film’s director, an insulin-dependent diabetic. The film records his morning regimen of blood sugar testing, needle preparation, and insulin injection, climaxing with a montage of a month’s worth of needles into various sites on his body. Afraid of needles? This won’t hurt a bit.

  • Brakhage

    Stan Brakhage is a legend, possibly the most important filmmaker of the avant-garde, and one of the greatest artists of our time. Since 1952, at the age of nineteen, Brakhage has created over 300 films, ranging from several seconds to several hours, constantly and consistently redefining the shape of film art. “Brakhage” explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendour of his films, his magical personal charm, his aesthetic fellow travellers, and the influence his work has had on generations of other creators. ‘“Excellent! A reverent, hagiographic, even mystical portrait of the canonical avant-gardist.” – Ed…

  • I Know a Place

    Producer: Jane Farrow Writer/Director: Roy Mitchell An intimate, funny, and completely engaging family photo album of a thriving little queer community buried in the heart of the rugged and isolated Ontario steeltown of Sault Ste. Marie. Bob Goddere is at the centre of this historic demi-monde. Director/writer Roy Mitchell accesses this intriguing story through his personal relationship with Bob and the community as someone who grew up in the Sault, and like so many young queers, came out at Bob’s parties in the 1970s and 80s. Conventional wisdom has it that good fences make good neighbours. But when you meet…

  • Zyklon Portrait

    “Zyklon Portrait” is about Zyklon B – the pesticide transformed into a genocidal weapon by the Nazis in the 1940s. It is also an elegy for the filmmaker’s grandparents. After years of silence, the filmmaker’s mother finally talks about her parents’ horrific fate. “Zyklon Portrait” is a Holocaust film without Holocaust imagery: family photographs, underwater photography and hand-painted imagery draw a personal story out of historical minutiae. “Elliptical and eerily beautiful.” – John Doyle, The Globe & Mail Awards: Grand Prize, Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Film, Spain; Best Short, Best Editing and Vision TV Humanitarian Award, Hot…

  • Mothers of Me

    “‘Mothers of Me’ is a visually glorious, abstract study in which the filmmaker explores, partly out of fear, the women in her family, their history of insanity and their response to a repressive environment. Through the use of close-ups and fragmented composition we are compelled to participate in her examination.” – Stacey Donen, Toronto Intenational Film Festival, 1999 Awards: 2nd Prize Danzante de Plata, Festival de Cine de Huesca, Spain; Marian McMahon Award, Images Festival, 2001

  • Eulogy / Obverse

    A filmmaker confronts his own sense of responsibility based on images he has created. AWARDS 1999 Regina Film and Video Competition: Best Experimental, Best Critical Thought, Best Overall 1999 Niagara Film and Video Competition: Best Experimental 1999 Montreal World Film Festival: Best Experimental 1999 TVO Telefest Competition: Jay Scott Award for Best Overall Production, Best Experimental 2000 Ann Arbor Film Festival: Honorable Mention 2000 Black Maria Film Festival: Honorable Mention ADDITIONAL SCREENINGS 2000 Cinematheque Ontario, Jackman Hall 2000 Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival 2000 Images Festival of Independent Film and Video 2000 Millennium Film Workshop 2000 BBC British Short…

  • Hoolboom

    “Hoolboom” is a film that Arts Toronto commissioned local filmmaker Wrik Mead to make based on his impressions of fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom. With some collaboration from Mike, Wrik has produced a film about the body, self-awareness, and the art of film.

  • Entonces Bueno

    Havana, Cuba. A man and a pig lead the way through this series of nine brief portraits of Cuban artists. A mixed-media short film composed of 16 mm, animated 35 mm stills, Super 8, interviews and sounds recorded in Havana. An image maker spends a month in Havana. There he meets a few visual artists with whom he talks about the kinds of ideas that motivate their art. Through this, the filmmaker creates metaphors of the exterior world these eight artists’ experience.