Genres: documentary

  • cockroach

    “Cockroach” is a handmade, cameraless animated film constructed with basic materials found around the home – newspaper, ink and Kool-Aid. Using cockroaches as a metaphor for language, it chronicles the pervasiveness and endurance of these primordial creatures. Text by Christian Cotroneo (“It’s a bug’s life in downtown Toronto,” originally printed in the Toronto Star) is used to create the soundtrack.

  • City of Dreams

    “City of Dreams” is the story of Marcel “Bambi” Commanda, an Ojibway man from Rama First Nation. Marcel sits in a prison cell, reciting a passage from his life. The film touches on his marginalization and displacement in the urban environment, the loss of culture, language and traditions, and his attempt to regain what he has lost. A poet, performer, drummer and emerging film and video maker, Marcel passed away in 1994 just after filming was finished. Selected screenings: Sundance Film Festival, USA, 1999; International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Cuba, 1996; Figueira da Foz International Film Festival, Portugal,…

  • Moving Violation

    Shot in Pixelvision and digital video, “Moving Violation” is an examination of the texture, rhythm and beauty that resides hidden within a community. It is a document of our disintegrating past, as a downtown area is slowly demolished to make room for parking. Selected screenings: Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2003; Viper International Film Festival, 2003; Reykjavik Short Film Festival, 2002 Awards: Best Experimental, Saskatchewan Showcase, Canada, 2002

  • Family Outing

    Using home movies to depict the inner feelings of a closeted adolescent, “Family Outing” attempts to negotiate a queer position within the conventional family structure. Its ravishing, optically printed images form a haunting commentary on childhood, alienation, love and ultimately renewal. “Bradley re-edits his source material with clinical precision to produce a film of enormous strength which, through image alone, acts as a kind of early warning system for the tsunami of coming out.” – 2001 Antimatter Festival of Underground Short Film & Video, Victoria, BC Selected screenings: “Short Film from the Canadian Underground” International Touring Program, 2002; Yorkton Short…

  • E.K.G. EXPOSITUS (the broadcast and the artistic media)

    E.K.G. EXPOSITUS incorporates three of Brynntrup’s short films: Aide Mémoire – Gay Document for Remembering (16:00 min. 1995); Heart.Instant/iation II (Self-generating Manipulations) (7:15 min. 1996); Loverfilm – An Uncontrolled Dispersion of Information (21:30 min. 1996); as well as Kein Film / No Film (1:20 min. 2000) Immanuel Kant Hospital in Neukölln, Berlin. Midnight. A patient is being admitted. TV journalists are on the spot. The beginning of a story that tells itself – and a self-portrait in broadcast and artistic media. In German with English sub-titles.

  • Chicken Real

    A fascinating industrial documentary about an automated chicken-growing operation that produces 156 million chickens a year. It carries Les Blank’s inimitable humour with tongue-in-cheek narration and surreal imagery.

  • Evanesce

    What happens when a filmmaker loses his sight? “Evanesce” is a collage of fading Super 8 footage shot during the past decade. Phelan confronts the possibility of never seeing again and tries to make sense of the memories trapped in pictures that are disappearing before his very eyes. Selected screenings: Retour d’images Paris, France, 2003; London Disability Arts Film Festival, London, England, 2003

  • Still Life

    Unlike the mediated images of current warfare, director Cynthia Madansky examines the effects of the destruction of Occupation through the details of cinematic landscapes and its inherent inhabitants. Through sound and image “Still Life” lays devastation at our doorstep. In its relentless questioning reaffirmed with a unique and unremitting soundtrack by composer Zeena Parkins, “Still Life” forces us to focus on the details of present-day Palestine. Selected screenings: Berlin Film Festival, 2005; Split Festival of New Film, Croatia, 2005; Winner, Youth Award, Festival de Cine de Huesca, Spain, 2005; Human Rights Film Festival, New York, 2005; Museum of Modern Art,…

  • Tracy Love

    It’s not really stalking, but it is an obsession. She’s not my girlfriend, but I love her like one. I dare you to watch this and love her too.

  • Tran Scan

    A stunning cross-Canada journey. A sequence of 112 specially designed telescopic time-lapse scenes form a seamless “flight” across the continent from Pacific to Atlantic. A new way of seeing. A celebration and a memorial. “The telescope becomes a microscope… and a stethoscope.” – SXA “A hypnotic meditation on landscape and perspective.” – Seattle Weekly “Reminiscent of extreme IMAX films, Tran Scan has beautiful scenery and cinematography of the highest caliber. Undoubtedly the most labor-intensive travel film ever created. No still image can convey a sense of this film.” – POV Magazine Selected screenings & awards: Silver Remi Award in Cinematography,…