Genres: documentary

  • Striptease

    This is a documentary which treats the subject in terms of work, performance and sexuality. In striptease as in dominant cinema, women are presented as sexual spectacle, silent objects to be looked at. This film presents the dancers as speaking subjects, constructing a job profile from the point of view of the women who do the work.

  • Surviving Memory

    “Surviving Memory” is a film about the role of loss in the formation of identity. It is a narrative intercut with documentary fragments of political actions, which connect the various characters to event through collective memory. Through autobiographical spoken texts, the narrator relays fragments of a relationship between two Jewish women. The fragmented texts speak of the relation between these women as well as recounting various past and contemporary historical events of fascist and neo-Nazi activity (and resistance), Lesbian/Gay rights, Pro-Choice and AIDS demonstrations. While these instances tell a personal/political story about loss, they are also meant to elucidate the…

  • Sweep

    “Sami called and asked me to go north with him and make a film about where his great-grandfather, Robert Flaherty, had been in Fort George. I suggested we stop in Kapuskasing to see the place where my mother’s family first settled when they arrived from Europe. Two men, on the road AGAIN, sifting through past worlds where there is everywhere, dusty remnants of the ‘great white father.’ Colliding head on with the passing present we see him in us.” – Phil Hoffman Sound design: Randall Smith

  • Sworn to the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella

    Carlos Santana reveres him. Bill Graham honored him. Katharine Dunham wouldn’t let him go home to Cuba for fiveyears. Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee swear by him. He’s a master of Bata (the sacred Santeria drumming tradition), Abaqua and Yeza, and secular Afro-Cuban jazz and salsa styles. Discover this enigmatic Cuban drummer, a virtual Rosetta stone of African culture, who has been highly influential in the growth of Latin jazz, pop and fusion in the U.S.

  • Tales of Tomorrow: Our Elders

    Alex’s wife has Alzheimer’s Disease and he lives with her in a Jewish home for the aged; Sarah has been in a wheelchair for 45 years and lives by herself – each has a different perspective on aging.

  • Tangled Garden

    “Tangled Garden” is an experimental documentary triptych exploring representation, desire and meaning from a queer perspective – a glance, which is philosophical, political and erotic. Produced from 1992 to 1994. “Tangled Garden, Act I, Scene II” (12 min. 1993) begins the filmmaker’s journey by exploring the history of the purebred Jersey cow, and suggesting that when we look at the “other,” it is often ourselves we see reflected back. “Tangle Garden, Act II, Scene II” (13 min. 1992) examines the male nude in the history of Western Art, and offers a personal interpretation of the eroticism inherent in these images…

  • Tangled Garden, Act II, Scene II

    Enter an imaginary gallery of male nude figures where homoeroticism in the history of Western Art is uncovered, as the patrons become part of the exhibit. The film teases and tantalizes as it explores masculinity and desire through a queer reading of the male nude traditionally censored. This experimental documentary constructs a desired desiring body using key works from a lover’s discourse, including denial, difference, fear, lust and rapture.

  • Tapas

    “Tapas”, a film about the Spanish Civil War, uses techniques of experimental cinema within a documentary format. This poetic remembrance of the War and its aftermath is told through the voices and stories of various generations of refugees gone to America.

  • There Goes the Neighbourhood

    Co-directors: Elizabeth Mackenzie, Bruce McNiven, Joshua Nefsky, Cynthie Withers

  • These Shoes Weren’t Made for Walking

    The filmmaker documents the lives of four women in his family, using their shoes as a common reference and as a springboard for thoughtful and provocative contemplations about their experiences. These four women (paternal grandmother, mother, paternal aunt, sister) recount and discuss the cultural and socio-economic forces that have shaped their lives. From the four-inch “golden lotus” embroidered silk sandals designed to fit my great-grandmother’s bound feet during the Ching Dynasty in Imperial China, to the tennis shoes and Italian leather pumps sported by my career-minded chartered accountant sister, the poignant stories behind their shoes are revealed. The film ends…