Genres: experimental

  • Echo

    “Echo” recalls childhood and the native home of the filmmaker through image, song and text. This self-portrait hints at the fragments, the pieces, the painful and repressed shards that the self contains, and through which it strives to piece together and illuminate its mysterious gaps. “‘Echo’ by Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof boldly explores homesickness and cultural yearning through visual imagery, song and text. In this atypical self-portrait, the artist has created a photogram of her body that acts as a travelling matte through the countryside of her native land as she mouths an old Polish immigrant’s song; the original recording pierces like…

  • Oh, You Pretty Things

    Told in a collage of sound and vision, “Oh you pretty things” chronicles the enchantment and disintegration of a relationship built on very different and questionable drives. Recounted through the experiences of two nameless characters in metropolitan New York, the minimal dialogue, ambient moods, engaging narration and sweeping music that make up “Oh, you pretty things” allow the observer to interpret the unique synergy of couples and the varying perception each person has to a shared situation. The ensuing emotional complexity ultimately asks the question: What is love?

  • Dark

    In this film, Winkler confronts the subject of the Australian aborigine through the intercutting of footage from a contemporary aborigine political demonstration with images of the past: cave drawings, the sacred Ayers Rock and the head of an old warrior. Through assertive zoom and pan shots of the rally, Winkler achieves a sense of extraordinary energy, of a generation of people coming out of oppression.

  • Gesture

    As for the two films made with Hidalgo, Ariganello assumes a role more traditionally defined as “cinematographer,” and his aptitude for composition, lighting and camera movement is skillfully in display throughout. Both works with Hidalgo are to “the real” what the films with Gehman are to “the fantastical,” and are keenly aware of the cinematic traditions from which they emerge. Each draws extensively, in style and structure, from neo-realism and observational documentary, while the function of Hidalgo’s narrator in Gesture operates to construct a story of a not-so-distant future-present, not unlike in Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962). — James Missen

  • Lunch with Fela

    “Lunch with Fela” is the filmmaker’s response to the passing of his last parent, Fela Ravett. Utilizing a combination of DV footage shot during her stay at a nearby nursing facility, excerpts from previously made 16mm films, animation sequences, plus remaining family memorabilia, the film renders the presence and absence of a much loved parent. “Lunch with Fela” is the eighth film in a series that addresses the complexities of family history and Jewish cultural identity.

  • Dead Boyfriends

    Fire! Blood! Puppet death! Follow the fate of foolish Coyote as he falls for vampy Pandora, a cursed temptress with a taste for dodgy circus performers. Coyote gets drawn deeper into Pandora’s lair of love as each of her lovers dies mid-act. This dark comedic short by Cirque Du Soleil clown Mooky Cornish and performance artist Xstine P. Cook was shot in the beautiful foothills of southern Alberta, combining live-action & puppet sequences to tell Coyote’s sordid tale. A creepy puppet band from hell accompanies a gory feast of accidental deaths performed by stop-motion, shadow, marionette, and hand and rod…

  • Searching For Wallenberg

    Drawings and text bring to life a poem by Isa Milman. …..Someone named Vera is looking for Raoul Wallenberg; he was last seen in a Soviet prison, scratching into the stone wall. Isa was born in a DP camp in Europe; she now lives in Victoria and has published a second volume of poems.

  • FACE IT! (Cast Your Self™)

    Images from the private sphere of the world wide web. “The video has been removed due to its inappropriate nature”. (Sat, 03. Mar 2007, YouTube | Broadcast Yourself™)

  • 3 X 16

    These three short films consist of perceptive depictions of a public square in Lima, the view from his mother’s rooftop, and work at the Toronto Film Festival revision department. The filmmaker used 16 mm as documentary format. Each film in this series is almost three-minutes long, which is the length of one roll of 16 mm film. The entire film uses in-camera editing, therefore all the editing decisions were made on location.

  • Are You Norma?

    “Are You Norma?” is an experimental animation exploring fashion restrictions placed on the female body.