Genres: documentary

  • Burning Farm House

    While driving down Highway 13 in Saskatchewan, Canada I noticed some unusual black smoke on the horizon which turned out to be an early 20th Century farmhouse. I quickly found an empty field nearby and positioned my camera for about an hour until the farmhouse merged into the prairie landscape.

  • What Travelers Are Saying About Jornada del Muerto

    Visitors and residents of the Tularosa Basin, site of the first detonation of an atomic bomb, contribute to the production of public memory as they offer philosophical reckonings, logistical advice, and plaintive texts after making “the journey of the dead.” Between 1945 and 1992, the United States federal government exposed people to the radioactive fallout from over 200+ detonations of above-ground nuclear weapons. Made in remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the detonation of nuclear weapons in the US and Japan and the 340th anniversary of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which forced Spanish colonizers out of New Mexico and returned…

  • Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf

    Forty years ago Austrians voted against opening a nuclear power plant that had already been built. Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf is a monument to the power of public protest and the potential of a democratic vote. After catastrophic flooding across Europe, Hope Tucker visited the nuclear power plant outside of Vienna that would have been powered by the same model reactor as Fukushima. Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf has an edit structure based on the chain of action in a boiling water reactor power plant and the path of protest that kept this plant from opening. Sound design incorporates a recording of the Tohoku earthquake.

  • Handful of Dust

    Prussian blue can be used to render images and counteract radiation poisoning. This obituary is composed of sequences of cyanotypes, exposed in the sand using paper sensitized with handmade emulsion and negatives from a 1954 Hollywood film. Rates of cancer in the film’s cast and crew reflect that it was shot downwind during the period of above ground nuclear testing. Handful of Dust, produced in the Utah canyon where the 1954 film was shot, is designed as an antidote to recover the memory of the downwinders. IMAGE AR: 2.35:1 NOTE ON THE SOUND: The integrity of the original –a dirty…

  • Grace of God, The

    A dark yet humorous psychological journey about the filmmaker’s efforts to reconcile his socially awkward and sexually naive past with his mature present. Putting himself in front of and behind the camera, L’Ecuyer has forged a stunning hybrid of fiction and documentary. “The Grace of God” crackles and gleams with L’Ecuyer’s aesthetic innovations and his impressive gifts for story telling and directing. “The Grace of God” is a labour of love, comprised of scenes gathered sporadically over a ten-year period. The resulting stream-of-consciousness film takes us on a metaphoric train ride home that slowly reveals the time-worn truth that moving…

  • The Sea [is still] Around Us

    Rachel Carson is dead, but the sea is still around us…This small lake is a sad reminder of what is taking place all over the land, from carelessness, shortsightedness, and arrogance. It is our pool of shame in this,’ our particular instant of time.’ E.B. White, 1964 A postcard usually enhances the reality. The contrast is more stark in Corinna, Maine, a former woolen mill town on the shores of Lake Sebasticook, where years of dumping industrial waste contaminated the water. In 1964, the author E.B. White mourned the death of fellow Mainer Rachel Carson and the altered ecology of…

  • Music is my Boyfriend

    The Hidden Cameras burst onto the Toronto music scene in the early 2000s with an irresistible combination of pop and queer sensibilities. Via songs ranging from haunted, aching ballads to foot-stomping anthems, the band’s outrageous stage shows packed sweaty dance bars, art museums and even churches. Fronted by singer-songwriter Joel Gibb, the ensemble continues its musical provocations to this day, with Berlin as its centre of gravity. MUSIC IS MY BOYFRIEND chronicles the early days of The Hidden Cameras. Combining interviews with original members, behind-the-scenes footage during a recording session and rarely-seen 16mm film of two of their legendary live…

  • remnanthood

    A 16mm film that investigates the history and the scenery within the geographical boundaries of Regent Park

  • kauaʻi ʻōʻō

    Hawaii 1987, the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō sings its final serenade.

  • Don’t Forget The Water

    A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge.