Film Categories: Portraits

  • Epilogue

    Epilogue: a section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened. A trip to bury my grandmother’s ashes results in an unearthing of things long obscured by time. Imbued with unanswered questions from the Lion series, Epilogue continues the biographical inquiry of The Weight of Snow and chronicles the aftermath of a dying matriarch and a family navigating cohesion.

  • The Films of Jack Chambers (Vol. 1-3)

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. This 3-volume set brings together for the first time the complete film works of Jack Chambers (1931-78), largely regarded as one of Canada’s most important visual artists. With a well-established career as a painter, he embarked on a short-lived but significant career as a filmmaker in the mid-1960s. Chambers’ artistic practice was described as “perceptual realism” and stood in counterpoint to the dominant abstract styles of his day. He completed five films in his lifetime.

  • Model Fifty-One Fifty-Six

    Model Fifty-One Fifty-Six displays the physical changes of the maker’s heart since being born with the congenital disorder, Transposition of the Great Vessels. This chronicle showcases a movement from human to cyborg that connects personal vulnerability to 1980s science fiction.

  • you rub me the wrong way

    you rub me the wrong way was created as part of SOUND + VISION TORONTO produced by Basement Arts. This project paired 5 local filmmakers with 5 local bands/musicians and 1 local neighborhood. I was asked to interpret and adapt a song by the potent forces behind post-punk band Pants & Tie in Toronto’s dynamic Kensington Market.

  • The Little Deputy

    Trevor tries to have a photo taken with his father.

  • Persistence of Vision

    Persistence of Vision is the story of a man who, against his doctor’s advice, was determined to make short films while he still could. From age 16 to age 30, Lorne Marin embarked on a burgeoning career as an experimental filmmaker. Now, thirty years later, his body dictates most of his life choices, yet his artistic urges remain. Lorne has lived the past fifty odd years with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease often described as “tunnel vision.” Today, his vision is limited to a circle about one inch in diameter. Persistence of Vision showcases the films Lorne made thirty…

  • Oya: Something Happened On The Way to West Africa!

    I wanted to tell a tale not often heard about gender and Indigenous Yorùbá Spirituality. Ọya: Something Happened On The Way To West Africa! follows my journey as a Queer gender-non-conforming Nigerian returning home to connect with Òrìṣà (African God/dess) tradition, and follow a trail back to the powerful legacy of my great grandmother, Chief Moloran Ìyá Ọlọ́ya.  This personal and political story vibrantly investigates the heritage of command, mythology, gender fluidity, womyn’s power and the hidden truth behind the power of indigenous Yorùbá spirituality.  As I encounter obstacles of a national strike and anti-gay marriage legislation to find the roots of the practice, will I be able to find affirmation…

  • Kino Crvena zvijezda (The Red Star Cinema)

    “During the Homeland War I worked as a war reporter in Vinkovci, the town I grew up in. One of the air raids destroyed the Red Star Cinema, the cinema of my childhood. There, as a kid, I dreamt of a great film career. Among the debris I found pieces of damaged filmstrip with clips from different film titles produced in the former state. A Filmstrip’s function is cinema screening. Splicing the pieces together could not restore the strip’s initial purpose. Destruction and damage changed the strip’s content and gave it a new quality. Even the Old Bridge in Mostar,…

  • In the Hollow

    In May 1988, girlfriends Claudia Brenner and Rebecca Wight were attacked while hiking the Appalachian Trail by a ‘mountain man’ named Stephen Roy Carr. IN THE HOLLOW tells the story of the shooting, Wight’s death, and Brenner’s desperate survival (and later transformation into an advocate for hate crime legislation in the U.S.) as she returns to the trail for the first time since the shooting.  The film combines documentary and narrative film elements, using the actual locations on the trail and dramatizations written by Claudia Brenner and director/screenwriter Austin Bunn based on her testimony. The film follows Brenner as she…

  • Morning Light

    An experimental documentary following the narrative of George Griffiths and his son, Blair, in the early 1980s. The film is a triptych made up of three unique short films, each roughly corresponding to a section of a book written by George’s widow, Margaret, which details the very same narrative.