Film Categories: Work about Women

  • Zero Degrees of Separation

    “George Orwell, in his wildest dreams, could not imagine a place like this.” EZRA, ZERO DEGREES OF SEPARATION Described by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as a film “bursting with concern about identities – sexual, national, political, generational, cultural, class, ethnic and more,” Elle Flanders’ feature -length documentary “Zero Degrees of Separation” breaks from the sensationalistic media coverage of violence in the Middle East by examining the current conflict through the eyes of two mixed Palestinian and Israeli gay couples. Courageous and outspoken, their relationships are as complex and volatile as the politically charged world around them. Selim, a Palestinian, and…

  • SIENA

    This short film was created especially for the Third International Short Film Festival of Siena in Italy, held in November, 1998. It was designed as an opening sequence to introduce the festival and was shown at the beginning of each of the ten in-competition screenings. The film begins with dream-like images of Siena at night. Through the combined rhythm of waving banners, galloping horses and distant voices, sound and image evolve into a world of cinema.

  • Bindi

    “Bindi” is a non-dialogue, narrative short film, which explores a mother’s choice to take her own life, while leaving her young daughter to deal with the aftermath alone.

  • Battle for Arthur, The

    Harry, a grumpy and socially withdrawn fish store owner is tricked into selling his favourite fish. In his quest to retrieve him, Harry realizes that there are much bigger fish in the sea.

  • Stars

    A rediscovered roll of super 8 film inspires the filmmaker to ponder friends that get lost with the passing of time. This bittersweet ode to friendship considers how someone can know all your secrets one year and somehow disappear from your life the next.

  • Lapse Lose All

    “Lapse Lose All” both documents and obscures the collage painting process of Toronto artist Kathryn MacKay. Time-lapse photography seems to speed up the activity of painting by concentrating the work of several weeks into a few minutes, concealing more than it reveals. The title of the documented work is “Hammett’s Eclipse,” and it is indeed eclipsed in this film – first by the body of the painter at work and finally by the reversal of time itself. Layered sounds, recorded live in MacKay’s studio, offer an ambient audio echo of the visual complexity of the painted work. This work can…

  • Covert Action

    “Covert Action” examines the seduction behind social interaction, remaking these gestures into a dance through the use of looped movies. I wanted to foreground the multiple fictions, the “facts” forever obscured in the fragments of memory. The result is an ambiguous narrative developed by its periphery, impossible to trace, disturbing, explosive. (Abigail Child) “Here rupture and repetition comprise the structuring principle. The film explodes in your face; it drives on until its final image, a summation of its prehistory, history and future – a tree being uprooted. What could be a more apt metaphor for the contemporary crisis in narrativity…

  • Can You Love Me?

    Adam Garnet Jones and Sarah Kolasky combine film, video, and experimental animation to create a painfully intimate documentary about Toronto artist Morgan Mavis. ‘Can You Love Me?’ is a seductive exploration of the artist’s narcissism and insatiable need for love. The film begins by describing a poster campaign, which was launched by Morgan Mavis as her thesis project for the Ontario College of Art and Design. She posted a self-portrait around the city of Toronto on every available surface, with text that read, “Can You Love Me?” and listed a phone number. In the photo, Morgan’s pierced tongue sticks out…

  • Tough Enough

    “Tough Enough” is a short experimental film which looks at how being outside of a mainstream gender identity can shut you off from even the simplest touch. As a young queer child, touching people of either sex can be extremely loaded. What can one do to confront this? This filmmaker decides to be tackled repeatedly in order to “shock” their body into feeling.

  • sisyphus

    ‘Sisyphus’ is a silent 16mm film shot on a Bolex exploring a journey that never ends. I made this film at renowned experimental filmmaker Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm workshop in Mount Forest, Ontario. Originally, I wanted to create a simple statement about overcoming depression. The ultra short narrative in ‘Sisyphus’ uses heartbreak as a metaphor for depression, since depression is just that – being heartbroken about life. The creative process and the practice of handmaking films speaks to treating life as a work in progress, thereby positively embracing the permanence of Sisyphus in my life. The lush, organic imagery in…