Genres: experimental

  • Waving

    “Waving” is a short film exploring the cyclical rituals of life, death and the family. A personal narrative chronicles the relationship between the author and her grandmother. Visual imagery works to create a strong metaphor, suggestive of the overwhelming, consuming power of grief.

  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Regular Programming Will Resume Momentarily.

    “Honouring the tradition of optically-printed films, ‘We Are Experiencing …’ is a visual treat that manipulates, combines and recombines to dazzling effect. In this digital age, this optically printed film runs countercurrent to the trends. The film uses repeating imagery such as five autumn’s worth of leaves, or the same images repeated, and the effect is mesmerizing.” – Liz Czach, Toronto International Film Festival, 1997

  • We Hold These

    The “Truths” of this film, which the title prompts, are slightly recognizable patterns of fish and animal biology, plant and flower shapes, and human anatomy which are interwoven with pastel cubes and other geometries – pastels as if “hung” in a white light interwoven with straight and diagonally bent black lines, eventually clear architectural forms. The recognizable patterns are literally etched on black leader (primarily) and interspersed with very organic painted forms on white. There is often an intended sense of hair and mucous membrane amidst these forms and interwoven with the electric “x-ray” sense of bones. The interplay between…

  • Weather Building

    The first half of “Weather Building” shows an empty room. Through the window is seen the film’s central emblem, the lighted tower at the top of an office building. A series of lighting and camera manipulations causes the planes of light in the room to shift and dissolve into one another. This and the soundtrack of footsteps (of someone who never appears) open for consideration a range of conceptions of filmic space. Part two repeats the “script” of the first half of the film – using a video playback of part one in the “role” of the weather building. There…

  • Wednesday, January 17, 1979

    This film deals with the problems of revealing “the truth” in a film. It explores cinematic traditions regarding the passing of time and the portrayal of history. Since film is in itself a temporal medium, the questions regarding its manipulation to achieve this end are revealed. The film demands an examination of film as a narrative medium versus film as a physical entity responding to a given technology.

  • Weir-Falcon Saga, The

    The term “The Weir-Falcon Saga” appeared to me, night after night, at the end of a series of dreams: I was “true” to the feeling, tho not the images, of those dreams in the editing of this and the following two films. The three films “go” very directly together, in the order of their making (as listed); yet each seems to be a clear film in itself. At this time, I tend to think they constitute a “Chapter No. 2” of “The Book of Film” I’ve had in mind these last five years (considering SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD as Chapter…

  • Western History

    This is a comedy, though few will know the subject well enough to laugh; for it meticulously represents the whole personal story of Westward Ho and Hoeing Man as one might attempt to remember it while watching a Pittsburgh basketball game.

  • What Do You Fear?

    A dog and two cats in France living, naturally.

  • Black Ice

    I lost sight due to a blow on the head from slipping on black ice (leading to eye surgery, eventually); and now (because of artificially thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter are made in frightful awareness of black ice. These “meditations” have finally produced this hand-painted, step-printed film. (SB)

  • What Ignites Me, Extinguishes Me

    An industrial psychedelic self-portrait, created with original footage shot in deserted factories on the south side of Chicago, manipulated extensively through optical printing.