Genres: Animation

  • Napoleon’s History of the World

    Napoleon loves a good tyrant. He might get the details wrong and misrepresent history, but he always tells a good story. In this episode, George Bush stages a successful attack on the Inuits. This finger puppet show comes from the puppet shop of Jamie Shannon and the hands and fingers of many good people. Selected screenings: Canadian Film Centre Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005; Rehab Parkdale Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005

  • Snack Pack

    “Snack Pack” plays with the tensions between the director’s Mexican and Canadian identities.

  • Fallout Food

    “Fallout Food” is a collaboration between two working-class women, produced as a commissioned work for Trinity Square Video’s “Eat” themed program. With similar childhood histories – having both grown up with working-class, single mothers on a fixed budget – powdered milk and boxed mashed potatoes are just two of the memorable items from our “fallout food”-filled kitchen cupboards. As young adults leaving home, visits to local food banks and even shoplifting produce for dinner were regular fare. Today we have both become rather seasoned food geeks. Flavoured by the ideas of class, food access, nutrition and time, we interviewed ourselves…

  • Green

    “My first foray into collage animation uses low-fi techniques, such as a photocopier, to illustrate a story in limerick form. The limericks tell of a place where creativity is suppressed and all acts of resistance are covered over with white paint. It also illustrates a character who displays an open sexuality, both queer and polyamorous. The DIY aesthetic calls up notions of subversion of the dominant culture through its ues of low-tech and hand-made traces.” – Juliana Saragosa Selected screenings: Splice This! Super 8 Film Festival, Toronto, 2004

  • Freeshow Seymour Compilation

    Freeshow Seymour is the collaborative effort of Allyson Mitchell and Christina Zeidler, who came together to explore their mutual crush on film-craft. Individually, they have been making work since 1994. In 2003 they both attended the Big Rock Candy Mountain residency at The Banff Centre, where they joined forces to highlight the work they are doing on candy and consumption and to explore their love of film. The basis of Freeshow Seymour is process. The two artists meet and see what evolves out of being together – whether it is films, music, crafts, performance or just thrift-store shopping. Their artworks…

  • Observatory, The

    An ambient track of evening sounds accompanies rephotographed sketches of the night sky by Jerry Spevak. “The Observatory” turns the heavens on its head: the blackness of space becomes the white of the page, the stars and galaxies precise points of black graphite. The pages of Spevak’s sketchbook are animated to capture the rotation of and movement through a vast, spectacular universe. Selected screenings: Toronto International Film Festival, 2004; Best of the LIFT $99 No Excuses Film Festival, Toronto, 2004

  • Curse of the Voodoo Child, The

    Sex, birth, fire and fingerprints. A passion play and the events of conception that result in mayhem. A rock’n’roll theme, in Cinemascope! Nominated for Best Animation at the 2006 Jutra Awards.

  • Solo

    A single gal venturing into a bar finds a groove all on her own.

  • Element of Light

    Inspired by the elements of nature on a journey through light and sound. Painted directly onto the film and accompanied by scratched optical sounds. A stream-of-consciousness motion painting. “A work of pure delight. A master of scratch animation, Reeves extends the tradition of visual music first explored in Canada by Norman McLaren. This is sublime work of cinematic dexterity.” – Philip Hoffman (Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, 2005)

  • Still to Go

    “Still to Go” depicts an existential roadblock. An animated character finds himself in an immobile walk cycle while attempting to cross the street. The ‘don’t walk’ signal is relentless and takes on a life of its own. The character seems fated to an unmoving walk cycle when his environment revolves to reveal the layers of his movements. Jack is exposed as a series of images at different stages in time. Still to go deals with cycles, layers transformation and rebirth. Selected screenings: Montreal World Film Festival 2005; Vancouver International Film Festival 2005; Los Angeles International Short Film Festival 2005.