Genres: documentary

  • RIFF

    RIFF is a short portrait of a Chicago-based tap dance team; three women who call themselves ‘Rhythm Iss’ These Bold women use dance as their voice, choosing to express themselves through tap. Their movements give life to a message of empowerment and celebration. In this film we drop into their practice space to experience the raw beauty of their dance rehersal.

  • Lot 22, Concession 5

    Hand-processed 16mm film imagery, tinted, toned, and transformed, is combined with memory fragments of a rural past to create a visual poem about family, place, and time. Filmed at Philip Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario in 2008, with sound design by Edmund Eagan. The title refers to the lot and concession number of my great-grandfather’s farm in Westport, Ontario, as recorded in the 1911 census. The voice is a fragment of the past, taken from an old recording of my father, Leonard McCann, who passed away in 1992. Selected screenings: 8th International Festival Signes de Nuit, Paris,…

  • Basin

    The forest and river awaken to a new day; the hum of the highway is constant. This is a boom town. An oil town. But what of it? An environmental scourge, or an economic miracle? … Just look. And listen. Selected Screenings: Hot Docs 2010 (Toronto, ON); Inside Out LGBT Festival, 2010 (Toronto, ON); Out on Screen, 2010 (Vancouver, BC)

  • Song of the Suicide’s Daughter

    Kaja Johnson was one of the few female beat poets who managed to become known to the general public. In this film, Johnson’s poem Song of the Suicide’s Daughter (1964) is articulated and reanimated using stills and animation. “I met Kay by accident in Athens and we talked a lot over coffee-we tried to start a little poetry magazine. She came back to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. I think she became a kind of street guru. This animation is based on a poem in her book. Very loose style: photos Xeroxed and hand-coloured, bits of coloured cels and a few drawings.”…

  • For Cultural Purposes Only

    In an age dominated by the moving image, what would it feel like to never see an image of the place that you came from? The Palestinian Film Archive contained over 100 films showing the daily life and struggle of the Palestinian people. It was lost in the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Here interviewees describe from memory key moments from the history of Palestinian cinema. These scenes are drawn and animated. Where film survives, the artist’s impressions are corroborated. This is a film about reconstruction and the idea that cinema is an expression of cultural identity – that…

  • In Their Room

    “In Their Room” is about gay men, bedrooms, sex and intimacy. The film ventures into the bedrooms of eight different men where you see them doing everything from the most banal to the most erotic. Complementing the revealing nature of their everyday activities are confessional interviews about fantasies, turn-ons and vulnerabilities. You never leave their bedrooms, but this is unmistakably San Francisco of the present. “’In Their Room’ shines a light on the honest thoughts, feelings, and sexual habits of a new generation of gay men (both young and old) largely ignored by the mainstream gay media. Focused, sexy, and…

  • Old Ink

    Using primarily the black and white drawings of Harold Town and riffing on the original drawings by primitively animating their contents, this short, abstract, primarily black-and-white piece eschews continuity and embraces the non-linearity of the drawn/painted etched line. Part of the TAIS Eleven in Motion program.

  • Leaving Me

    An abstract journey through the fabric of the brain, revealing the fragile elements of self that are contained within.

  • AurA

    “AurA” is as an experimental documentary that explores a friend’s 8-year struggle with mental and physical health. Following a seizure on a soccer field, and the discovery of a brain tumour, life goes from bad to worse when one loses hope for the future.

  • View From Here, The

    Travel is often the ultimate test of a relationship. In “The View From Here”, the filmmaker combines travel footage of picturesque Europe with journal entries, to provide insight into a relationship that’s on a seemingly downward spiral. Winner of Alabama Shout Film Festival award for Excellence in Storytelling.