Genres: documentary

  • Lecciones en Proceso (Lessons in Process)

    “Lessons in Process” is a poetic documentary about a film making workshop given by Canadian filmmaker Philip Hoffman at the famed Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba. Founded in 1986 by Argentinean poet and filmmaker Fernando Birri, Colombian writer Gabriel García Marquez and Cuban filmmakers Julio Garcia Espinosa, and Thomas Gutirres Alea, “the school of the three worlds” was established to give students from developing countries in Latin America and the Carribean, Africa and Asia, an opportunity to participate in the democracy of the image. Hoffman collaborates with the students to produce…

  • El Barrio

    A colorful mosaic of the people of Toronto’s downtown core – one of the most culturally diverse areas in North America. Vivid images and dynamic editing capture the intense spirit of these groups and their festivities, eventually merging them into one glorious celebration.

  • Just Passing Through

    Told through the perspective of a landscape, “Just Passing Through” tells the story of evolution as one image gives rise to the next. The film explores the relationship between permanence and impermanence where familiar subjects are fleeting and we are left to contemplate unfamiliar landscapes.

  • I Met A Man From Burma

    Inspired by the David Lynch Interview Project, this character-driven film explores the oldest going conflict in the world – the country of Burma (now Myanmar). Expressed through the personal pain of one man, Burmese Refugee and “Freedom Fighter”- Ler Wah Lobo, from personal loss, regret and hope – this is a tale of a man from Burma.

  • Dr. Bish Remedies

    From Ross Lipman’s “personal ethnographies” series, an informal visit with legendary filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State. “From the lone transcendent biker riding the two-lane highway of nightmares in 1964’s Mass for the Dakota Sioux to 1970’s Quick Billy, Baillie blazed a path through nothing less than the American consciousness itself, closing the cycle with the Quixotic epigram “Ever Westward Eternal Rider!” As the admonishment warns, the journey continues, and endpoints are illusionary – only movement is of essence. –“Whither Bruce Baillie?”, Ross Lipman, 2010

  • Howard

    “Howard” is a documentary about the filmmaker’s estranged Uncle Howard who was murdered in Yonkers in 1995. The film uncovers his complex and conflicted life as a gay man troubled with piety and self worth, which drove him to success, yet, ultimately led to self-destructive behavior and death. The story is intertwined with the filmmaker’s musings about the life/death of the Uncle she did not know in an attempt to comprehend what it means to have an estranged relative murdered.

  • Cuki Colorinchi Evolution

    A masked crochetist shows us his sudden immersion into crochet art. Spanish with English subtitles

  • Different as Night and Day

    “Different as Night and Day,” shot in the Port Lands of Toronto, Canada, examines the disconcerting coexistence of technology and nature. It cycles through three views of two power plants as light and climate transition (cf. Claude Monet’s series of Rouen Cathedral). The views are bridged by long dissolves of smoke streaming from one of the plants. The dissolves are often gorgeous and reminiscent of the Northern Lights, but are composed with images of airborne pollutants (cf. the pollutionenhanced sunsets painted by JMW Turner in the 19th century). “Different as Night and Day” is a dynamic painting.

  • Walking Away 2

    Scarborough Bluffs (1974): a woman walks away from us, through a field of grass. Approaching a treeline, she turns and crosses the frame. Instead of panning to accommodate her, the camera zooms wider – the woman continues to diminish as if still walking away and the landscape is fully revealed. The shot partially repeats: a wipe transition replaces the grass with water, and a ‘shipscape’ from Toronto’s Port Lands (2011) is revealed. Poetically, light reflected from downtown office towers catches the sail of a boat crossing the frame. Then amusingly, a split-screen sequence underlines the correspondence between woman and sailboat.

  • Fati et Aissatta (Fati and Aissatta)

    Fati, 23, and Aissatta, 16, live in the banlieue north of Paris, in a cité called “La Rose des Vents.” Their father emigrated from Mauritania to France 40 years ago to work on the assembly line at Citroën. Shot over a period of three years, the film follows the stories of the two sisters, their refusal of traditional ideas of French identity and their search for independence within a community where secularization, radicalization and patriarchal rule are continually in confrontation. Fati, 23 ans, et Aissatta, 16 ans, vivent dans la cité de La Rose des Vents, dans la banlieue nord…