Film Categories: Portraits

  • Letters From Vancouver

    Letters from Vancouver (1973) comprise two films, made at the same time, that share a common interest in “the medium is the message” (McLuhan), and form a reflexive, self-referential enquiry into the film medium itself. Together, “the politics of perception” (33min)and “the framing of perception” (33min) form a meditation on our audio/visual creation, bearer of information and culture, meaning and representation. It is a medium with extraordinary powers, able to evoke the deepest feelings of love and loss, anger and fear, laughter and thoughtfulness, yet of great fragility, fading with time, precarious on a perforated strip of celluloid.

  • What’s Ours and What We Are

    In “What’s Ours and What We Are,” images, motifs and words that originally served a particular political agenda are playfully manipulated to distort and re-contextualize their original status, satirically articulating the purpose of propaganda which is to ‘speak to’ and ultimately to persuade a spectator.

  • The Ritual of the Sex Magick Warriors

    The Sex Magick Warriors are organizing, they reveal themselves to the city and risk it all to carry out an obscure objective. The colors pink and teal are the embodiment of Magick, Art and Sexuality and their use by the warriors -through empathy, telepathy and tactile care- spills the tea on their means for survival in these harsh urban environments. The ritual exposes the hardships of this army of lovers and reveals their sensual strategy for self preservation.

  • Contents

    An old wallet, abandoned intact, kept for unknown reasons. Uncorroborated memories of a close (but distant) relation. How are these documents speaking to each other? What is the nature of their harmony? Official versus living memory: each useless, unstable, disintegrating. Is memory the bureaucracy of the self? How does it order our lives?

  • wish

    Against the background of the Canadian prairies and the coast of Eastern Canada, wish explores Korean monosyllabic words. While counting to three in Korean, the video explores the multiple meaning of single-syllabic words from one to three that also signify work, labour, profit, etc. Using an observational lens, I documented my retired parents on a trip to the East Coast of Canada. In this video, I explore Canadian landscapes from a diasporic point of view revealing how new narratives emerge when immigrants engage with the Canadian landscape. wish is dedicated to my parents who contributed to the economic fabric of…

  • Waiting (انتظار)

    A young woman journeys to visit her grandmother. What transpires between the unsaid and silence propels into a prolonged moment of tension and desires of connection. Image description: A young woman and her grandmother sit next to each other on a couch. They both look straight ahead with stony-faced expressions, not talking.

  • LUCA (m/f/x)

    Society distinguishes between two sexes: male and female. In Germany there is a new law for a new legal gender “divers”. „Divers“ refers to a gender spectrum between male, female and beyond. “I feel my own sex very changeable, it never feels like I am a man or a woman. But only a body to which belongs a spirit and a mind that creates“. This is how Luca describes themself and unites alleged characteristics of both classical sexes in his appearance. Although Luca has experienced antipathy and even physical violence, because of appearance, Luca would never stop being themself.

  • Prowling By Night

    Gwendolyn’s film Prowling By Night documents the harassment faced by sex trade workers in their crusade to promote safe sex. The film is made with the active participation of 21 prostitutes in Toronto’s Parkdale area.

  • The Delian Mode

    A creative documentary exploring the life and work of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire; the woman behind the distinctive Doctor Who theme music created at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the early 1960’s.

  • Masters of Rhythm the Afro-Peruvian Way

    “…a rare and delightful glimpse….capture(s) the artistry, love and philosophy….” (John Santos, percussionist, seven times Grammy nominee) Masters of Rhythm, of filmmaker Eve A. Ma, has screened in five countries on three continents, and won awards in the USA and Germany. A natural outgrowth of my earlier documentary about Afro-Peruvians, it features percussionists Lalo Izquierdo, Cotito and Huevito. Performancs include two original music compositions and a dance form called Afro-Peruvian zapateo, with fancy footwork similar to tap dance.