Genres: experimental

  • Dreaming House, The

    The filmmaker, his father and his youngest child walk past the house in Chinatown where the filmmaker’s father was born, triggering a sublime moment.

  • Cruel Rhythm

    Shot during the opening stages of the First Gulf War, Kerr’s “Cruel Rhythm” revisits the American desert for a cinematic tone poem in the vein of ‘The Last Days of Contrition’ A canopy of sound bites of media coverage on the build-up toward the war is juxtaposed with the alienness of windmills in the desert, and a startling sequence of drifting faces of a crowd coming towards the camera in slow motion. A thought-provoking piece on media’s construction of societal paranoia “Cruel Rhythm” is an attempt to make a public, shared feeling intimate, or conversely, to make a subjective feeling…

  • toronto mov.

    Movements from just one point of view, movements within one setting, movements against a ubiquitous background: this is what this short film is documenting.

  • Fugue

    Inspired by musical and psychological definitions, “Fugue” examines the dark flight from identity and environment. Hand-processing and the juxtaposition of positive and negative footage depict the journey of a woman as she shifts between being black or white and widow or bride. Selected screenings: Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, 2005; Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour, USA, 2005; London Film Festival, London, UK, 2005

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Christina Battle

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. Christina Battle’s hand-processed, coloured and manipulated films explore the material and transformative possibilities of the film medium. Using techniques such as cameraless animation and collage, she “paints and sculpts” on film. Her work explores built and natural environments, history and the act of collective remembering, and a fascination with weather and storms. Study guide includes an essay by Janine Marchessault, York University. 1) hysteria (2006 35mm 4 min.) An unstable community leads to accusations and panic. Re-considering the Salem witch trials of 1692. Then doesn’t always seem so far off from now.…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Philip Hoffman

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. Described as Canada’s “pre-eminent diary filmmaker,” Philip Hoffman has been making work since the late 1970s. Expanding the boundaries of the personal documentary, his films explore themes of family, memory and loss while at the same time interrogating the film medium and the authenticity of the photographic image. “Philip Hoffman is a precious resource, one of the few contemporary filmmakers whose work provides a bridge to the classical themes of death, diaspora, memory, and, finally, transcendence.” – Martha Rosler. Study guide includes an essay by Michael Zryd, York University. 1) Somewhere Between…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Barbara Sternberg

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. For more than thirty years, Barbara Sternberg’s filmmaking has considered the mysteries of human existence. Drawing on the creative power of the cinematic medium to make the invisible visible, Sternberg’s films use a resolutely personal approach to explore rhythm, time, space, and the nature of the everyday. Featuring: Opus 40; Transitions; Like a Dream that Vanishes; and Burning. Study guide includes an essay by Barbara Godard, York University. 1) Opus 40 (1979, 16mm, 14:30 min.) “Opus 40” is about repetition: repetition in working and living, repetition through multiplicity and series, repetition to…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Wrik Mead

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. Wrik Mead, Canada’s prolific poet-priest of pervert pixilation, has accumulated an impressive body of animated shorts in his twenty-year career. Known for his play with texture, light and colour, Mead’s films weave queer fantasies, parables, and even documentary, while exploring the relationship between stigma, shame, and sexuality. Study guide includes an essay by Tom Waugh, Concordia University. 1) What Isabelle Wants 2) Warm 3) Haven 4) Homebelly 5) Closet Case 6) frostbite 7) guise 8) stage fright 9) camp 10) Hand Job 11) Manipulator

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Michelle Mohabeer

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. In Michelle Mohabeer’s films and videos, form and content are inextricably connected. Re-working the transformational film aesthetics of “third cinema,” Mohabeer’s experimental documentaries blend archival footage with personal memory, infusing each work with a signature pastiche of political consciousness, poetics and performance. Study guide includes an essay by Monika Kin Gagnon, Concordia University. “I recommend these films for researchers working on feminist theory, and the history of feminism, especially those with an interest in Canada and Canadian political identity or Caribbean/South American identity. These films will also be of use in the…

  • Crystals

    A cinematic tribute to William Bentley, a Vermont dairy farmer who pioneered the “art” of snowflake photography for forty-six winters (1885-1931), proving that no two of his 5381 specimens were identical. This film contains about 1500 examples (fewer than the average snowball), showing the incredible variation of design in nature, while producing the effect of an “organic” hexagonal mandala in a state of continual metamorphosis.