Genres: experimental

  • Song for Mixed Choir

    “Song” is laid over two picture rolls, printed together. The first magnifies the grain of the film, filling the screen with the circling constituents of its material base. The second roll draws a succession of figures from a dimly lit nightlife. There is a dance, a house party and a subway turnstile moving toward the most domestic kind of horror, a horror of the commonplace and the mundane, the horrors of toothbrush and comb and electric lamp. “Song” is an image of cinema’s prehistory – before “in the beginning was the word” but also: before the domain of picture took…

  • Sound of Space, The

    A film of an individual looking for himself, looking for inner peace in a world of continual conflict. Due to the fact that I wanted to be in the film, that the subject was me, it was my search, my wife did all the shooting when I was on-screen… The whole thing depends on focusing attention on something. The film is silent and should be run at 24 frames per second. After the film ends the projector bulb should be left on and the reel turning, film flapping against the projector for one minute. (CG) Available on DVD on “Charles…

  • Sowesto

    A collection of footage from my friends or by my friends and me. It is amazing the number of events recorded by various means around London. “Sowesto” contains the opening of Region Gallery, The First Canadian Happening, Barbara Ann Scott in St. Marys, Nihilist events, etc. (GC)

  • space

    “Something to be holdin, to you: something too beholden to you.” A concrete poem made as a very blue Super 8 film experiment about: “I need a little space.” It’s all the things she never said as she visits the haunts of their urban love and remembers what happened in the Fall.

  • Spare Parts

    Scenes from old educational and propaganda films, cut up and arranged (deranged) in numerical patterns. Chance collisions occur with techniques based on William Burroughs’ writing experiments and John Cage’s music composition. The final section consists of 24 variations of 24 frames in one second of film; to watch all 6.2 X 10 (to the power of 23) possible permutations would take approximately 76 thousand-trillion years.

  • Sparkill Ave

    Named after the street on which he lives in Tappan, New York, “Sparkhill Ave” continues the autobiographical line of inquiry through family, friends, neighbours, community, and Americana that began with “T.Z. “(1979) and passed through “Trial Balloons” (1982), “Bang!” (1986), and “A Frog on the Swing” (1988). In addition to his usual improvisations on form, colour, and motion, Breer collages and animates photographs of street scenes, parades and seasonal variations in the landscape. Combined with an unusual-for-him continuously running synthesizer soundtrack, “Sparkill Ave” paints a portrait of a small town, a seemingly closed system that’s never the less informed by…

  • Speakbody

    Using techniques from documentary, the avant-garde, and narrative films, a great deal of information about abortion is compressed into a short time. The film combines the interwoven multi-layered voices of women recounting their experiences with minimal images from one woman’s memory. Short but powerful.

  • Special of the Day

    In an event designed specifically for the film, two of the most renowned young chefs working in Canada, Jamie Kennedy and Michael Stadtlander, come together to collaborate on a special meal for a surprise guest. As contemporaries who also happen to be old friends, the chefs complement each other’s distinct visions as they work side-by-side in the highly charged atmoshphere of a restaurant kitchen. In a subtle cherography of action and sensitivity, their work unfolds in the film like a performance, conjuring up a delightful visual treat. The chefs pepper the action with their own insights, shedding light on the…

  • Speck

    This new release print version of “Speck” is relatively true to the original 1989 version. Over the years many attempts were made to remake the film into a new work. Gradually the filmmaker realized that the new experiments, although interesting, were too closely tied to the original work. A compromise was made so that the best of the new experiments were incorporated into this final print. Initially, the idea was to have three synchronized Super 8mm films printed in superimpositions to one strip of 16mm. Given the inherent possibilities and limitations of the process, the A-B-C- rolls tended to favour…

  • Spirit Matters

    “Spirit Matters” is a silent monologue on the simultaneous perception of space and time. The film was constructed without a camera by writing directly on clear celluloid and then “translated” by refilming the resulting strips on a light table so that they appear as “subtitles” beneath the original inscription. The film functions as both process and object – an interactive experiment in reading, writing, and seeing.