Film Categories: Portraits

  • Sex On Wheels (demi-feature)

    “Sex On Wheels” tells the secret history of San Francisco’s sex workers. Interweaving Super 8 footage of a living history bike tour/theater piece (think Colonial Williamsburg, with whores) with archival film and photographs, the film tells the story of a city’s forgotten residents: an ex-slave who became a wealthy procuress, a cross-dressing 1940s lesbian gigolo, a madam who became mayor, a gang of transgender teen hustlers who rioted for their rights, a radical feminist hooker/assassin, and a posse of anarchist strippers who took over a peep-show. 12-minute version also available, see “Sex on Wheels (short)”

  • Perception

    An experimental animation exploring the disconnect between one’s own perception of self and how one is seen by the rest of the world, specifically facing the journey of transition from female to male.

  • Towards a Vanishing Point

    Footage shot in Coba, Mexico and the Siwa Oasis in Egypt and a found film from California serve as inspiration for a series of sketches on the notion of the vanishing point. Commissioned for LIFT’s 30th Anniversary Celebration.

  • Caribou

    “Caribou” is an 11-minute science fiction experimental portrait of Saskatchewan. Structurally it is a journey from the forests of northern Saskatchewan to the Badlands in the south.

  • Lines on a Slow Decline

    “Lines on a Slow Decline” is a portrait of my neighborhood; shot within a 5-block radius on Super 8 film and full-format VHS video.

  • Dark Horse Candidate

    “Dark Horse Candidate” is a time-based project that is intended to be a portrait of one specific location over the course of one full year. One shot per day was selected in the editing process (365 shots in total), and each one appears in sequence according to the calendar year.

  • Witchcraft

    “Witchcraft” is an examination of the nostalgic, and darker implications of my family’s Super 8 “home movies.” It is an extension of an earlier work, “Down Payment on a Dead Horse,” which is rooted in a quote from Ernest Hemmingway – “All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”

  • Nightfall

    “Nightfall” is a formal portrait of the Canadian winter landscape, shot on Super 8, VHS, DVCAM, and 16mm.

  • Hot Under the Collar

    “Hot Under the Collar” is an experimental video that examines the imagery of the Kodak “Shirley” test patterns. An examination of the “male gaze,” the evolution of film and video, and obvious formal considerations constitute the foundation for “Hot Under the Collar”.

  • Down Payment on a Dead Horse

    “Down Payment on a Dead Horse” begins as a formal portrait of the Saskatchewan winter landscape, and becomes an examination of masculinity (shot on Super 8, 16mm and VHS). Here, I am focused on the inherent innocence that lies within these family images, and I am also drawn to the darker implications of them as well. In contrast, the winter landscapes are meant to be in direct opposition to the lush color, and familiar poses that have become synonymous with old Super 8 “home movies.”