Film Categories: science/medicine

  • Quiet

    Ali must lie and say she is her wife Sam’s sister so that she can be with Sam in the hospital because gay marriage is not legally recognized in the small Texas town where they live. Reluctant to listen to the doctor’s opinions about Sam’s condition, Ali loses herself in the couple’s memories: their first meeting, their first date and the day before Sam’s accident. Simultaneously, the hospital situation comes to a head when Nurse Lucy realizes their true relationship. Ali must confront those who would keep her from Sam as well her own fears of letting go. Selected screenings:…

  • little fountains

    A meditation on cultural appropriation and nature’s myth. Prompted by Roland Barthes’ “Mythologies”, the videomakers have found a microcosm of the new age wasteland within little fountains. The work is an object focused meditation within a young woman’s life is brought to attention.

  • We Are Animals

    In this alternate-history fable set in the 1980’s AIDS Crisis, a closeted young man is thrust into the midst of an anti-government coup and finds that the animal within is stronger than the monsters that oppress.

  • Field of Stones

    “Have you ever seen anything that looked so out of place that is haunted your subconscious and you could never let it go? Well I have… Field of Stones is my personal 43:17 minute journey inspired by a strange cemetery location that took me deep into a study of religion and science. Are the two connected? Is there something more to our lives and what is next after this life? These are just some of the questions that I would eventually find answers to as well as answers to questions I was unaware I was even asking. His journey changed…

  • The Weight of Snow

    A home movie of a trip to Chernobyl, a dying matriarch and a set of troubling personal circumstances, The Weight of Snow is an essay documenting memory, time and place. A film referencing the tradition of personal travelogue films of The Escarpment School and the essay style of Sans Soleil, The Weight of Snow travels from Canada to Chernobyl from the perspective of a young man exploring radiation in the midst of death, cancer and emotional turmoil. A collection of all techniques used throughout the Lion series, The Weight of Snow is the centerpiece of the work. Echoing the collage…

  • Forever

    Part dream, part documentary, Forever weaves history and hedonism to form a world of dandelions, hypnosis, bicycles and memory. Created from experiments replicating the effects of radiation on film, the piece explores the nature of airborne radioactivity and brings us from a woman’s story of adolescence, to a bicycle race, to life in the Soviet Union. A bricolage of pop culture and personal histories, Forever is about looking for dandelions and finding atoms. As the opening film of Lion, Forever employs spray and smudge techniques to explore the concept of airborne radioactive contaminants and how they travel in open air.…

  • Water

    A film exploring the impulsive nature of radiation, Water is the last dream of a dying man. Using brilliant blue and black images from cross-processed 16mm, the film explores the end of the 3 Chernobyl divers – three men who sacrificed their lives to drain a pool of radioactive hydrogen peroxide beneath the burning reactor no. 4 during the Chernobyl disaster. Mutating out of darkness in to a piercing blue, Water drifts under the surface of consciousness and into final memories. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Sodium Lamp Study

    A technical experiment about exposure and an interview of a woman’s experience with radioactive ablation therapy for thyroid cancer, Sodium Lamp Study is a meditation on exposure, treatment, and the unseen emotional effects of radiation. The visual element of Sodium Lamp Study explores the photographic concept of reciprocity failure – when the exposure of an image is separated in to multiple exposures rather than a single exposure with the same light strength, the results become unreliable. In a similar way, patients facing the treatment of thyroid cancer are presented with an option of a single dose of radioactive iodine, or…

  • Cure

    Cure is a document from a time when radiation was touted as a solution for everything- for beauty, power, perhaps even for a broken heart. A drifting composition, Cure uses gently applied “radiation” techniques to mimic the application of a precious beauty cream. It completes the look with whispers of the promise of radium and the solutions it brings, floating in and out like traces of perfume. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Lion

    A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion explores the Chernobyl disaster and the nature of radiation, recollection, and personal history. Lion navigates atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and a cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amidst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. This conceptually arranged film album is composed of seven works on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. The series combines memory, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations…