Film Categories: Portraits

  • Buffalo Death Mask

    A conversation with Canadian painter Stephen Andrews returns us to a pre-cocktail moment, when being HIV+ afforded us the consolation of certainty.

  • I Met A Man From Burma

    Inspired by the David Lynch Interview Project, this character-driven film explores the oldest going conflict in the world – the country of Burma (now Myanmar). Expressed through the personal pain of one man, Burmese Refugee and “Freedom Fighter”- Ler Wah Lobo, from personal loss, regret and hope – this is a tale of a man from Burma.

  • Dr. Bish Remedies

    From Ross Lipman’s “personal ethnographies” series, an informal visit with legendary filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State. “From the lone transcendent biker riding the two-lane highway of nightmares in 1964’s Mass for the Dakota Sioux to 1970’s Quick Billy, Baillie blazed a path through nothing less than the American consciousness itself, closing the cycle with the Quixotic epigram “Ever Westward Eternal Rider!” As the admonishment warns, the journey continues, and endpoints are illusionary – only movement is of essence. –“Whither Bruce Baillie?”, Ross Lipman, 2010

  • Howard

    “Howard” is a documentary about the filmmaker’s estranged Uncle Howard who was murdered in Yonkers in 1995. The film uncovers his complex and conflicted life as a gay man troubled with piety and self worth, which drove him to success, yet, ultimately led to self-destructive behavior and death. The story is intertwined with the filmmaker’s musings about the life/death of the Uncle she did not know in an attempt to comprehend what it means to have an estranged relative murdered.

  • Cuki Colorinchi Evolution

    A masked crochetist shows us his sudden immersion into crochet art. Spanish with English subtitles

  • Happy

    The quest for happiness dictates the shape of many lives in the world. Some find religion, some seek love, but all are searching to be happy. “Happy” moves through hand-processed 16mm film to explore the intersection of happiness, apostasy, and love. “Happy” considers the fiction of happiness and what it truly means, how it is proselytized in the church, media, and each other. Can simply smiling bring about an emotional change? Can being told to be happy make you happy? Has anyone told you that god loves you?

  • Selected Works by the Loop Collective: Volume 1

    A selection of films produced between 2005-2011 by members of The Loop Collective, a Toronto-based group of independent filmmakers, musicians, dancers and multimedia artists who strive to connect cinema to related interdisciplinary art forms. 1. fugitive l(i)ght 2. c: won eyed jail 3.Thaw 4. Parícutin 5.Quanta 6. Shapes Eat Shapes 7. Levitas 8. Spiders in Eden 9. The Changing Light 10. Christ Church – Saint James 11. Thought Form 12. Morning 13. Many Glimpses 14. Movement / Stasis (documentation)

  • Breathtaking

    Breathtaking takes on the asbestos industry through a moving and personal investigation into Kathleen’s father’s death from an asbestos-related disease and the current present-day use of asbestos in Canada and internationally. Valued since the beginning of time and commercially mined since the Industrial Revolution, asbestos was coined the ‘magic mineral’ for its extraordinary capacity to protect against fire, and was used in everything from brake pads to oven mitts. Discovered to be carcinogenic, the use of asbestos was banned in many countries and the use of it limited in others. Canada, along with Russia and several other countries, still mines…

  • 100 Butches #9: Ruby

    A catholic convent schoolgirl remembers her first gay crush.

  • Joaquin La Habana – LebenZwischenWelten (Joaquin La Habana – Living Between Worlds)

    Joaquín La Habana – Lebenzwischenwelten is a documentary portrait of the transformation artist Joaquín La Habana, an androgynous Cuban-born singer, dancer and entertainer, who currently resides in Berlin, Germany. As he plays effortlessly with changing gender and culture, his opera-trained voice switches easily from the baritone of a rebel to the soprano of a seductress. Now in his sixties, Joaquín La Habana reflects on his life and career during the ’70s and ’80s as part of New York City’s provocative underground scene. The film contains impressive archival material, including Joaquín La Habana’s performance at the famous nightclub, Studio 54.