Genres: documentary

  • 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…

  • Jane’s Window

    “My grandmother cherished her large dining room window for the opening it afforded her onto the world. From this perspective she would espy the arrival of friends and family, contemplate the change of seasons and reflect on time past. On the shelves of this window she collected mementos of a childhood in China, life as an artist, and the travels in between. Combining images of my own travels through Japan and China with images of the home my grandparents built, ‘Jane’s Window’ reflects on the passing down of memory, curiosity and creativity across generations.” (CK) Selected screenings: Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto,…

  • Citizen Lobbyist

    Do you ever feel like you want to take action against the government but feel overwhelmed by where to start? Enter ‘Citizen Lobbyist’: a new documentary about political activism against the odds; an informative do-it-yourself guide on how to organize your community and make things happen. Every year more than 20 transgendered Americans are murdered. Because there is no prevision in present legislation for transgendered people, these murders go as unreported as hate crimes against the transgendered. It is time for trans people to take matters into their own hands. During the divisive 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign, a group of…

  • Trains of Winnipeg – 14 Film Poems (Feature Length)

    “Idiosyncratic, independent and supremely inventive… One of the finest non-narrative movies ever made in this country.” – Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly GertJan Zuilhof, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Jan. 2005: “A visually opulent, almost hypnotic film, for which the word poetic really is justified for a change. This hybrid film is made up of fourteen film poems, each of which has the character of an individual short film, but in tone and approach they are all clearly related. Without a doubt, the film fits into the tradition of the experimental film, but it also has an epic quality rare within this…

  • Intersex Exposition: Full Monty

    ‘INTERSEX EXPOSITION: Full Monty’ is a short documentary video about a Jewish Australian who performs at a lesbian strip club in Sydney and ‘comes out’ (naked) as Intersex during the performance. It was produced and directed by the performer themselves.

  • Love in the White City

    “Made with a camera the size of a deck of cards carried in my pants pocket for one year, the ‘White City’ beckons, repulses and quakes with portent. The original poem was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2002 on the theme, ‘Love in Winnipeg’ – it began at 3 am in mid-February at 30 below, on a drive home through an empty, wind-swept, snowbound city. An audience member in my home town asked me why this film in particular was so dark, so sad. I said I didn’t find it to be so, but I wish I’d said something to…

  • Trains of Winnipeg (the short)

    “An epic audiovisual poem. Trains as kinetic sculpture and kitsch, found sound art, a film-maker’s fetish or a Romantic’s wet dream: O take me to far away places, the rhythm in our plastic hearts, as we are also machines. Tortured cello, the scraping wheel, old cameras, film and rail as parallel tracks through the remnants of the industrial age. ‘Trains of Winnipeg’ uses multiple film gauges and digital formats in a collage of colliding and looping vantage points on this brief, ever-moving, moment in history.” Music by Emily Goodden.

  • F Movie

    “An homage to ‘Sesame Street,’ it was made with a brief loop of Super 8 footage shot across the Strait of Juan de Fuca – just 14 miles from Victoria to the Washington State coast and Bangor (the world’s largest nuclear submarine base and a primary Cold War target). “This hilltop view was many things to us while growing up: a place to peer out at the dark with a date, tongue-tied; a place to see the first flash of a long expected nuclear strike; a place to almost hear the bombs dropping on far-off Pacific villages; and up in…

  • 18,000 Dead in Gordon Head

    “In the summer of 1982, during a visit to the my hometown of Victoria, I witnessed the murder of a teenage girl – killed by a sniper on a quiet, suburban street, in the middle of the afternoon. I returned a year later to lie with my camera on the spot where she died, and to roam the neighbourhood searching for footage. The title of this film comes from the oft-quoted statistic that the average sixteen-year-old has witnessed 18,000 murders, on TV and at the movies. ‘Gordon Head’ is the Canadian suburb where the film takes place. “The original footage…

  • Hitler (Revisited)

    “In 1996, my 16mm film ‘Hitler!’ screened at the London International Film Festival, not far from where its subject, my brother, was born. In this way, Niall Holden, who has been institutionalized for over 25 years, has travelled around the world. “This is the final film in a trilogy about my relationship with my severely schizophrenic brother. ‘Hitler! (Revisited)’ is a partly hands-on, partly digital, ‘re-mix’ of the earlier film. With the assistance of film-maker Sol Nagler, I literally deconstructed a print of the earlier film, separating it back into individual shots, which we then put through a variety of…