Genres: experimental

  • Preludes 1 – 6

    “Preludes 1 – 6” is comprised of six hand-painted and double-frame printed sections of 16mm film: 1) Turquoise and maroon-toned thin lines of paint are interspersed with variously toned circular “water-marks” of blotched paint giving way to multi-colored brush strokes which then thin to something akin to the beginning. 2) Interplay of toned rectangular shapes, vertical and horizontal and diagonal lines in juxtaposition with hardened darker shapes, which, gradually shift tone and lighten until ending on thin blues. 3) Many white interruptive frames and absolutely straight-edged multi-colored lines amidst “clouds” of color finally thickened into blobs with lengthy white (clear…

  • Jesus Trilogy and Coda

    “The Jesus Trilogy and Coda” is composed of the following four parts: 1) “In Jesus’ Name” presents an almost continuous fluttering movement midst the complexity of multiple small shapes in mostly autumnal colors, like unto a wind moving through fall leaves. Embedded in this skein (almost as if branches of this scene) are the dark lines ephemerally (almost invisibly) composing the conventional face of Christ. 2) The second film, entitled “The Baby Jesus” begins with pearl-pinks and gold-flecked shapes midst “garden greens.” It proceeds to contrasting desert scenery slashes of sand-yellow under black “sky,” with ephemeral suggestions of animal locomotion.…

  • Fable: I Want the World, Clean

    “Todd’s poetic documentary excavates the history of a family home that has been passed down five generations. It uncovers a sort of violence done in the course of carving up the land and trying to purify one’s family histories.” – Chris Gehman, Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, 2001

  • Persian Series 6 – 12

    In the spirit of the Roman, Arabic, Egyptian and Babylonian Series, these hand-painted films attempt to imagine the kind of Persian visual thinking which created their calligraphy, miniatures and aesthetic designs in general. Persian Series #6 begins with what appears to be dried red and yellow rose petals, suddenly shot-through with blue, which causes a shift to violets and greens. This mash of colors thickens and is scored by white, and then black, calligraphic lines, which are “echoed” in all previous floral colors whose “dance” seems to turn clock-wise and “explode” into fiery reds. Persian Series #7: very pale, thin,…

  • God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him, The

    This film of single-strand photography begins with the “fire” of reflective light on water and on the barest inference of a ship. Throughout, the interwoven play of light and water tell the inferred “tale” of the film through rhythm and tempo, through visible textures and forms in gradual evolution, through resultant “moods” generated by these modes of making, and then, by the increasingly distant boat images, birds, animals, fleeting silhouettes of people and their artifacts, flotsam and jetsam of the sea-dead, as well as (near end, and almost as at a funeral) flowers in bloom, swallowed by darkness midst the…

  • Preludes 7 – 12

    This is a collection of 6 hand-painted sections interspersed with black leader – which has been and will ONLY be shown in this form and under this title. The first is what I call “plein-aire abstract” inasmuch as I am, while making the film, observing specific surroundings (primarily Vancouver Island, mostly the city of Victoria) but am painting the reactions of my internal optic system affected by external scenes, only occasionally (and obliquely) identifiable. The ocean, the trees, the varieties of cityscape and landscape assert themselves as “pictures” (there is even a mirror image of a neon bar sign which…

  • 1:1

    This cameraless animation is about the 1:1 relationship between sound & picture: the 1:1 concept became the structure for the entire piece and spawns further thought about relationships between elements in cinema (artist to medium, viewer to screen, projector to film).

  • Hand Job

    A lonely figure walks to a private screening room. What he is getting excited about is not what it may appear. “Hand Job” is a hand-processed, manipulated, and toned film that shows the filmmaker’s true love for the medium.

  • Soul Cages

    This lyrical experimental / narrative film was inspired by the various myths of the Soul Cages. Legend states that the souls of drowned sailors are captured by underwater spirits and held in clay pots at the bottom of the ocean. A mortal man becomes compelled to set the souls free so that they can continue their afterlife journey. The film sets the legend in the present. It is the story about a relationship between a photographer and the man who possesses her film in a one-hour photo lab. I was inspired by the Soul Cages myth to construct a narrative…

  • Traces

    Stunning hand-tinted imagery intermingles with a love letter to the artist’s departed dog Mica. Bittersweet as any country song, so familiar you swear you’ve heard it before – but it’s just your heart breaking, worn and sure.