Film Categories: Portraits

  • Two Streets & Adela (Dos Calles y una Chica)

    In this experimental narrative, we are in a world that moves more slowly, allowing us to savour the sights and sounds. The pace reminds us that in the location where the story unfolds, the south of Spain, things move at a more deliberate pace. We watch flamenco costume designer, Adela, on a very special day. Adela’s life has a rhythm to it, filled with the beautiful colours of the cloth that she uses to create her costumes with. The daily life outside her front window also has a rhythm to it: two streets that intersect in the charming city of…

  • Confidente (Confident)

    This is me.

  • Truck

    An aging junkie (the filmmaker’s uncle) reflects upon the glories of smack, his rebel / criminal past and getting ‘clean’.

  • Leftovers

    Norma and Virginia lived together in Chicago for almost fifty years. They died isolated, the vibrant lesbian community of their youth long gone; their tiny Chicago bungalow stuffed with objects – matchbook covers of bars where they had danced, paint-by-numbers left half done, bowling shirts Norma wore winning her many trophies, and over two thousand snapshots of lesbian life spanning four decades. An experimental documentary, Leftovers uses Norma and Virginia’s snapshots and objects to explore the unforeseen trajectory of lives lived at the margins. The film is a love story that poses a number of questions. How do we use…

  • Roundtrip

    A diptych filmed on a journey between Montreal and New York City. My last roll of Ektachrome to commemorate an important day when two became unified in the act of giving. 

  • Marshlands (Marécage)

    A psychic’s prediction of impending disaster underlies this experimental meditation set on the marshes of Sackville, New Brunswick. Shot on Super 8, 16mm and video, Marshlands moves elliptically from a present steeped in memory to an uncertain future. Un médium prédit un désastre imminent: voilà le point de départ de cette méditation expérimentale se déroulant dans les marais de Sackville, au Nouveau-Brunswick. Tourné en Super 8, en 16mm et en vidéo, Marécage se déplace de façon elliptique, d’un présent enveloppé de souvenir vers un futur incertain.

  • Learning To Milk A Cow

    When the filmmaker’s grandmother was 19, she was taken from Soviet Ukraine to Germany to work on a Bavarian farm under National Socialism. She had the luck and perseverance to survive hardships of the forced famine in her homeland and forced labour in the new one. The stories of her everyday life – learning how to milk a cow, falling in love – are interspersed with three generations of reflections on politics, longing, feelings of displacement and loss. Hand-processed black & white film, colour film, photographs and official documents create a montage of different perspectives. The hand-touch aesthetic combines with…

  • Tale Of Winter

    Tale of Winter focuses on the societal indifference towards homeless people. One the of the biggest challenges of ours times is the lack of empathy towards the underprivileged, the poor, the deranged: the people who live on the margins of the society but who are often treated as if they are invisible, ignorable or as if they are nuisances. With Tale of Winter, I would like to draw attention to how much and how easily we disregard that which is right in front of us, that which call for our sensitivity and understanding.

  • Fading Away

    For my family a way of life has faded away, even the memories are fading. I am left with fragments of stories, old photographs, and knick knacks. I never lived on that farm. I will never live there, except through the memories of others. (Elaine Pain)

  • Famous Diamonds

    A kaleidoscopic search for desire trapped inside a volcano. Famous Diamonds is a short film that studies lies, love, and desire by weaving together a diary narrative and an exploding icon. Composed of various image-making techniques, Famous Diamonds is a hand-painted, hand-processed tour of the dissolution of one’s internal image of desire.