Genres: documentary

  • Elegy

    Amidst the ghosts of his cultural roots, Popovich creates a lyrical and loving light monument dealing with separation, change and death. “Part diary, part travelogue, part memorium for a friend’s death, ‘Elegy’ deftly and poetically blends the private concerns of the filmmaker, a discovery of roots in his native Yugoslavia, and the insubstantiality of remembered moments.” – Kass Banning, Now Magazine Screenings: Toronto Festival of Festivals; Krakow Film Festival, Poland; International Documentary Film Festival of Nyon, Switzerland; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michigan; 5 Jours du Cinéma Indépendent Canadien, Montreal; CBC-TV

  • Selected Works by the Loop Collective: Volume 1

    A selection of films produced between 2005-2011 by members of The Loop Collective, a Toronto-based group of independent filmmakers, musicians, dancers and multimedia artists who strive to connect cinema to related interdisciplinary art forms. 1. fugitive l(i)ght 2. c: won eyed jail 3.Thaw 4. Parícutin 5.Quanta 6. Shapes Eat Shapes 7. Levitas 8. Spiders in Eden 9. The Changing Light 10. Christ Church – Saint James 11. Thought Form 12. Morning 13. Many Glimpses 14. Movement / Stasis (documentation)

  • Breathtaking

    Breathtaking takes on the asbestos industry through a moving and personal investigation into Kathleen’s father’s death from an asbestos-related disease and the current present-day use of asbestos in Canada and internationally. Valued since the beginning of time and commercially mined since the Industrial Revolution, asbestos was coined the ‘magic mineral’ for its extraordinary capacity to protect against fire, and was used in everything from brake pads to oven mitts. Discovered to be carcinogenic, the use of asbestos was banned in many countries and the use of it limited in others. Canada, along with Russia and several other countries, still mines…

  • Joaquin La Habana – LebenZwischenWelten (Joaquin La Habana – Living Between Worlds)

    Joaquín La Habana – Lebenzwischenwelten is a documentary portrait of the transformation artist Joaquín La Habana, an androgynous Cuban-born singer, dancer and entertainer, who currently resides in Berlin, Germany. As he plays effortlessly with changing gender and culture, his opera-trained voice switches easily from the baritone of a rebel to the soprano of a seductress. Now in his sixties, Joaquín La Habana reflects on his life and career during the ’70s and ’80s as part of New York City’s provocative underground scene. The film contains impressive archival material, including Joaquín La Habana’s performance at the famous nightclub, Studio 54.

  • Championship

    At a wrestling tournament, a young competitor faces match upon match. Referees converge on the scene. The crowd’s attention wanes and focuses with the intensity of the bout. Sounds drift in: a psychic piano enters over fast and short breaths. This is a contest of past and future. It will be decided in the ring.

  • Spirits In Season

    Lily Dale is a spiritualist community in Chautauqua County, New York. Pilgrims and tourists swarm the hamlet in summer, but in the fall, Lily Dale becomes a more intimate setting for spectral communions. This film explores the town’s Leolyn Woods, pet cemetery, Inspiration Stump, and Fairy Trail. Music by Nate Wooley.

  • Brébeuf

    A study of St. Ignace, in Huronia, where the ethnographers and Jesuit missionaries, later saints, Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, were killed in 1649.

  • INTER-MEZZO

    INTER-MEZZO is a documentary of performance as well as a performance of documentary. Through a triptych, which treats the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo, faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR! plays with the biography documentary form, dealing with issues of voice / gender / representation as Stephen traces his westernization, the discovery and silencing of his voice, and people’s reactions…

  • Living Poetry with Rick Patrick

    A concise exploration of how life informs poetry. Rick Patrick had a difficult childhood, growing up with an abusive father. He matured into adulthood with some anger about the world and found redemption by writing poetry, persisted through numerous rejections and finally got published.

  • Field of Stones

    “Have you ever seen anything that looked so out of place that is haunted your subconscious and you could never let it go? Well I have… Field of Stones is my personal 43:17 minute journey inspired by a strange cemetery location that took me deep into a study of religion and science. Are the two connected? Is there something more to our lives and what is next after this life? These are just some of the questions that I would eventually find answers to as well as answers to questions I was unaware I was even asking. His journey changed…