Genres: experimental

  • I.E.

    “I.E.” is composed of a series of themes and variations involving the interaction of camera and filmmaker. There is a predominance of in-camera animation, and the resultant distortions and manipulations both reveal and conceal the process of the film’s making. “I.E.” deals with illusion, although there is no doubt that it verges on the autobiographical. What we see is the filmmaker inthe act of making the film, that is, we see the taces of this process, insofar as the procedures used are capable of transmitting them. The figures in the film finally lose their abstract value and become vehicles for…

  • Iconography of Venus, The

    A look at private and public images of women and their “place” in society. The act of being placed on a visual pedestal of unrealistic proportions and its accompanying expectations. The operatic soundtrack written by the filmmaker is performed by Suzanne Palmer. “Photographs of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the Venus de Milo and Venus of Willendorf achieve their stunning resolution in the Louvre where a crowd waits for the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa to break into speech, to recover the distance betweeen her sitting and the time of our approach. What we watch with the filmmaker is not…

  • Idiot’s Delight

    “Almost any solitaire game is often humorously called ‘Idiot’s Delight.’” – Official Rules of Card Games Black-and-white images of waves dissolving over stills of gravestones, old fences, boats on the shore, and a voice meditating on the joys of celibacy.

  • Illuminated Texts

    “A very demanding work of great complexity and rigour, ‘Illuminated Texts’ presents itself as a great debate between nature and technology, unity and dissolution, the divine and demonic, an irrecoverable past and the terrible velocity of time. Following on Elder’s previous films, the autobiographical ‘Art Of Worldly Wisdom’ and the structural essay in history ‘1857 (Fool’s Gold),’ ‘Illuminated Texts’ reenacts, this time on a single site, both the task of constructing a self and the progression of historical agony. “Although prolix in his use of texts – acted out, superimposed on the image, spoken in voice-over – and proliferate in…

  • Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 14

    This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems…

  • Immoral Memories 1

    A morass of memories begun in a Paris cafe in 1895, a side-tracked train from the mother’s womb, mewing and puking its own history by the light of Dr. Frankenstein’s lamp. A history of cinema as twilight sleep, a shroud for the entr’acte between birth and history. A horse embraced as the last act of an active mind falling to sleep, ushering in the new century.

  • Impromptu

    This piece of film was initially shown at the 1989 Toronto Experimental Film Congress and was not destined to be screened again in its present form. Thus the title “Impromptu” refers partly, due to people having asked to screen the reel, to the distribution of a print. However, each scene being a combined image, filmed frame-by-frame alternatively at two or more periods during a given day, a procedure depending for its exact execution on the manner in which the film situation evolved, “impromptu” also refers to the tendency of reality to veer towards the unexpected. The sound was supplied fortuitously…

  • In the Alcove, at the Place

    For “In the Alcove, at the Place” Davis went back to the alcove (a private place in her room) and the place (the four corners of an intersection in Toronto, consisting of a house, two grocery stories, and a coin wash) every couple of weeks for nine months. In her alcove she filmed herself sitting in a chair; at the place she filmed aspects of its everyday life, making discoveries about it and becoming friendly with some of its inhabitants. In both alcove and place, there is change but also repetition. Among other things, the film concerns her growing familiarity…

  • Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 15

    This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems…

  • In the Cinema No One Speaks Unless They Have Something to Say While in Real Life It’s Just the Oppos

    “Michael Hoolboom’s curtain raiser sets the tone for what goes on – In the Cinema.” – Vancouver International Film Festival The main character is the title in this film about naming, actors and paternity.