Film Format: 16mm

  • Dance of Life, The

    “The Dance of Life” features the extended monologue of a first-generation Canadian woman. This stream-of-consciousness reflects a discourse of existence fractured among the many “characters” seen in the film. A dizzying exploration of many people in the process of becoming many other people. Inevitably this cyclical dance, this tautology of existence, leads us to “la vie c’est la mort.”

  • Party #4

    “A special one for my first son… his last as a lone ranger (only child). Shot on double-perforation B&W 16mm, the film ran through the camera twice and doubled the consumption of ice cream and cake.” – John Price

  • Always for Pleasure

    This film is an intensive insider’s look at Mardi Gras and the myriad of musical traditions in this annual celebration in New Orleans. It provides an interesting background to black America’s honouring of the native peoples in the southern States. Dressing in elaborate Indian costumes they make specifically for the Mardi Gras, black Americans tell of the time when native communities gave them refuge from the slavery of the southern States. A film rich in its investigation of Southern music as a cultural expression of a people’s struggles.

  • Dance with Me

    The impressionist, lyrical style of the film is a departure for Nicolaou, who describes this film as “one half documentary and one half fictional narrative.” The film is a collage visually and thematically, though the narration serves to anchor the piece with a freestyle kind of story telling. Nicolaou drew upon experiences in her own life when creating the film. She incorporates footage from her family’s home movies of the 60s and 70s. “A haunting portrayal of the yearning for intimacy between parent and child.” – Henry Mietkiewicz, Toronto Star Life always appears to be more joyous in old home…

  • Moving Images – The Film-Makers’ Cooperative Relocates

    The day the Film-Makers’ Cooperative was forced by loss of lease to move from their offices at Lexington Ave. and 31st Street in New York City, filmmaker and Coop member Joel Schlemowitz showed up with a camera to document the historic moment. On the soundtrack Jonas Mekas, one of the Coop’s founders, and MM Serra, the current executive director, describe the Coop’s beginnings, the organization’s recent struggles, and the difficulties of finding space for the arts.

  • Butte

    Poetic and sensual, “Butte” unfolds over the course of a day, marking the progression of time at four key points – sunrise, mid-day, late afternoon, and sundown. Filmed on the Blood Reserve in the plains and ancestral grounds of Southern Alberta, the camera instinctively accentuates dancer-choreographer Byron Chief-Moon’s deep connection to the land. The film captures images of nature and the connectiveness with the land – undulating waves of wild grass, the slow passage of clouds, pastoral, woodland thicket, and streams. The body as landscape is the central image; where the flesh, bone and muscle become synonymous with the land.

  • Sophie’s Place

    A culmination of five years of work. Full hand-painted cut-out animation. Totally unplanned, unrehearsed development of scenes under the camera, yet with more ‘continuity’ than any of my previous animations, while meditating on some phase of my life. I call it an ‘alchemical autobiography.’ The film begins in a paradisiacal garden. It then proceeds to the interior of the Mosque of St. Sophia. More and more the film develops into episodes centering around one form or another of Sophia, an early Greek and Gnostic embodiment of spiritual wisdom. She is seen emanating light waves and symbolic objects. (But I must…

  • Dance, The

    “With an irresistible humour, Rimmer speculates in “The Dance” on the nature of the film loop. We see a (1920’s) couple whirling around a dance floor at a dizzying pace… Even after the technical building block of the film is evident, the vertiginous effect remains… Uncanny in its ability to evoke complexity of responses from a simplicity of means.” – Art and Cinema, #2

  • Hamfat Asar

    The strangeness of this film is laced with carefully molded apocalypses as the filmmaker explores a vision of life beyond death – the Elysian fields of Homer, Dante’s Purgatorio, de Chirico’s stitched plain. A moving single picture. Evolving the structure or script for the film involved a process of controlled hallucination, whereby I sat quietly without moving, looking at the background until the pieces began to move without my inventing things for them to do. I found that, given the chance, they really did have important business to attend to, and my job was to furnish them with the power…

  • Once Upon a Time

    In many ways a more searching, and certainly a more complex film than “Our Lady of the Sphere”. We are first presented a cobweb castle, filled with the haunting doubts of the young protagonist. Spirits appear on the screen and are heard on the soundtrack. Gradually a female guide emerges and escorts the young man into an antechamber to another (and possibly higher) world.