Genres: experimental

  • Pierre Radisson – Fjord and Gulf

    “Pierre Radisson – Fjord and Gulf” presents the daily activity and environment of its eponymous Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker. The CCGS Pierre Radisson works year round providing escorts for commercial shipping to ports cut-off by ice, scientific and search and rescue support, among other activities. Shot during the Pierre Radisson’s work on the Saguenay Fjord and Gulf of St. Lawrence in Quebec during February 2016, the film provides a window into a portion of the invisible labour underpinning the Canadian economy. The film brings the deep winter landscapes of coastal Quebec into dialogue with intensive industrial activity of ore shipments…

  • Sum (Heart)

    Based on ideas of Zen Buddhism and rooted in the 7 Grandfather teachings, Sum (Heart) is a rumination on death, grief and letting go. Starting out as a visual mourning song to Wendy Babcock, Mr Toqui Wong and Jack, empty landscapes represent the yearning for the company of dead friends. Water becomes a metaphor for grief and mourning, the ebbs and flows of nature reminds us of the cycle of life which transforms into a stark ode to a new day and new beginnings. I put all my sadness, prayers and hope into this trilogy while still aching for their…

  • Farewell Transmission

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation opened the doors of the CBK Transmitter Station in 1939 to serve the prairie region of Canada. “Farewell Transmission” is equal parts an indexical record of the demolition of CBK in 2015 and a subjective response to the residual media documenting the event. The building is framed with tension preceding its destruction: emulsion pulsated as if with decades of radio transmission, creating an unsettled eulogy for a cultural institution. Selected screenings: Dobra Festival Internacional de Cinema Experimental (Brazil, 2017); Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montréal, QC, 2017); Antimatter Media Art (Victoria, BC, 2017) Best Short Film, Saskatchewan…

  • 165708

    Shot entirely in 16mm black-and-white film using single-frame photography, “165708” employs in-camera techniques and chemical manipulation of processed film to produce an eidetic study of temporal elasticity. Techniques include flicker, time-lapse, light painting, stop motion, tinting, and toning. Combined with cycles of alternating exposed frames, these methods imbue the work with a rhythmic magnetism, apparent both in the tempo and the aesthetic of the images. Exploring the capacity of the medium to express various notions of time, the film begins with a woman looking out from the shoreline. This acts as a point of departure to disparate yet interconnected sequences…

  • The Burning Desire in a Dollar Bill

    The Burning Desire in a Dollar Bill shows how the special interests of media conglomerates and their parent companies mould our latent desires at a young age, later leaving us confused as to whether we are lusting after the sexually charged imagery or the products being advertised. The film argues that the act of purchasing is the strongest aphrodisiac in a capitalist society, leaving open the possibility that a solution to toppling capitalism is to shift our sexual desires from consumerism to personal freedom from the state. The film was created during a residency at Signal Culture using a modified…

  • FOREIGN QUARTERS

    My mother’s lost Chinese heritage was a point of departure in this film which investigates the process by which an image is constructed in places foreign from that of my own. The condition of distance genetic to the ethnographic image traces the elusive qualities of her past and persona.

  • Sky Room

    Someone is missing. Plants grow, but at what cost? Technology threatens and seduces as humans attempt to solve a mystery through telepathy and mirrors. Stainless steel and broken glass strewn about an intergalactic discotheque.  Commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives and made in collaboration with sound artist Brian Kirkbride, with footage and sound from the archive chopped, manipulated and arpeggiated into a fertile mix of anthem and narrative.

  • Film About a Woman Who

    “Film About a Woman Who” is a multi-layered composite of images, texts, music, and speech that deals with oppositions of emotional life set off against the appearances of everyday behaviour. The story of a passage across an unspecified length and order of time is sustained by the intermittent narration of two off-screen voices (a man’s and a woman’s, never clearly identified with the on-screen characters) that reads, in the present tense, discrete paragraphs about the experiences of someone referred to only as “she.” On screen two men and two women and, occasionally, a child “play out” the valences of their…

  • You’ve Got Tail

    A mail carrier is in for a salty surprise! The pups at this house are a little friendlier than he was expecting…

  • Lunch Time

    In this film we drive through downtown Cairo. While exploring the urban life and daily routine of the streets near Tahrir square, we sink into a labyrinth where our path keeps on being cut. During the 2011 revolution it was often said that “the people took back the streets”, but since then the police and military have returned to power and show their supremacy by controlling the public spaces, leaving many to adapt to a system where they have no voice and must work around the obstacles that are left behind.