Genres: experimental

  • Cuentos de Mi Ninez (Tales from My Childhood)

    “In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet launched a violent coup in Chile that overthrew the Marxist elected president Salvador Allende. Thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and exiled as a result. My family was among the many that were exiled in Canada.” – Francisca Duran In this experimental, autobiographical film, a young woman remembers and recounts difficult childhood memories of the 1973 coup in Chile when her family was forced into exile.

  • Two Unrelated Shots

    An ode to our imaginative and creative instincts, “Two Unrelated Shots” is simply the outcome of a need to make something.

  • Figure on the Ground, A

    A hand-tinted hand-processed film loop dances with an obsolete low-tech telecine transfer machine to the underscore of a filtered soundscape. A portrait of the filmmaker in several inferences at once, with a nod to a few of her influences.

  • Two Hummingbirds

    A beautifully understated work that creates an almost palpable sense of absence through a simple interplay of word and image.

  • Pictures of Things That Aren’t There

    “Pictures of Things That Aren’t There” is an anthology of six works loosely tied together by the circumstance of their making: all were initiated while Daniel was caring for her mother as she lived out her life with a disease that erodes the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Her mother’s illness is never more than peripherally addressed. Daniel attends instead to the unnoticed workings of the creative imagination – the capacity of mind she believed her mother had lost. They are small works, made for one person and offered to anyone else who cares to appreciate them. Aesthetic…

  • Chaulera

    A woman runs from her memories. After a dangerous accident she slips into her unconscious, where she has to decide whether to live and face her demons or stay floating in the safety of her mind. Shot on Super-8 and then optically printed and manipulated on 16mm, this is a film that tells its story as much through texture and sound as narrative. It features a composition for string quartet composed by the director.

  • Pink Shirt

    In the late summer, a young man wanders through an urban park in the late afternoon, seeking a connection to the music and sights around him. He wears a pink shirt. He reads a book, lays down on the grass and has a daydream. As dusk turns to twilight, he reflects on another young man who was in his life.

  • In the Kingdom of Shadows

    “In the Kingdom of Shadows” documents a paragraph being typeset on an early twentieth-century Ludlow Linecaster. The text is taken from Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of the Lumiere Brothers’ film “Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat” (1895). As the words melt into a pool of lead, the alchemical magic of printing is linked to that of cinema. Commissioned by LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) for their 25th anniversary program, “Film is Dead! Long Live Film!” Selected screenings: Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007; Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2007

  • Her name was Violet

    A simple pairing of fire footage and a photograph from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Her name was Violet” pays homage to a girl who once had her whole life in front of her. This short piece reflects on the act of photographing to remember, the fragile nature of life, and the power of the earth’s elements. Commissioned by LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) for their 25th anniversary program, “Film is Dead! Long Live Film!” Selected screenings: Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto, ON, 2007; Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2007

  • North Southernly

    Changes of directions, in the wind, the edges, the shapes, a joyous and mesmerizing intrigue. Perhaps an other way to put it is to describe this piece as a humorous digital cine take on the long cultural history of the lessons left by the great Chinese painters of the 13th century for whom shapes and edges where often all one and the same. Selected screenings: Media City, Windsor, ON, 2007