Genres: experimental

  • Short Films 1976

    Four films verging on portraiture, converging to make a drama for all seasons, starring: Jane Brakhage as The Dreamer; Bob Benson as The Magnificent Stranger; Omar Beagle as The Snow Plow Man; and Jimmy Ryan Morris as The Poet and as Doc Holliday. (SB)

  • Tragoedia

    This film was conceived about 10 years ago when I heard Norman O. Brown define “Tragedy” as “goat-song” (or as Webster has it: “Greek tragoidia fr. tragos goat aiedein to sing; prob. fr. the satyrs represented by the original chorus”). I disagree with the last part of the Webster explanation and tend to think that the quality of sound of goats crying did prompt the Greeks to choose this term for their drama. In any case, the film “Tragoedia” is also ironic (thus, perhaps the Latin of its title) as often is goat “lamentation”; and finally I should quote this…

  • Once

    “Once” is a film about language, loss, and the construction of memory through language. Through voiceovers and fragmented footage, the characters in “Once” tell how they have come to study language in an attempt to relocate themselves at particular junctures in their lives. They describe their desire to learn Yiddish, a language they have speculative connections to or memories of. Their distance from the language and its intrinsic power to link them to an identity seems to increase their appetites for this language lost. Yiddish, it appears, while providing the elements of language, also represents a loss for, and only…

  • False Creek

    False Creek was named when industrialists developing the waterway in Vancouver discovered that the creek was actually an inlet.

  • 23

    Mixing live-action with illustration, “23” tells the story of one girl’s discovery that her 23rd birthday means more than she thinks. Andrea, a frustrated and cynical woman, makes her way to an undisclosed location. Following her journey we begin to learn how one’s person life is unknowingly connected and interwined with the lives of others – that randomness is nothing more than a pattern of a deeply imbedded complexity of order, an order so complex it is not immediately discernible or obvious. Inside an industrial building turned loft, Andrea steps into an elevator for an encounter that will change the…

  • Banana Split

    A banana-eating boy in a park shares lots of bananas with another boy.

  • Disappeared

    “Disappeared” is a visually stunning reflection on the seemingly ordinary moments that distinguish a man’s life. The sharp reality of present day scenes in the film build to a climax and are interspersed with montage sequences which express the dreamlike quality and memory. The accompanying lyrical narration, spoken by Kate Fischer, provides a continuous time element that unites the images.

  • Shelter

    “Shelter” is a multi-layered experimental film that cleverly weaves archival social commentary and recent political activism in a playful analysis of our culture’s misplaced priorities. The film blends a variety of appropriated material – including a homeless demonstration during the gala premiere of an Atom Egoyan film at the Toronto Film Festival – with archival footage of circuses, westerns, and Pierre Burton discussing the pros and cons of building a bomb shelter. “Shelter” also celebrates the inherent qualities of the film medium, qualities that have quickly become marginalized through the current obsession with digital technology.

  • Dog Star Man: Part 1-4

    “In the tradition of Ezra Pound’s vorticism, PART 1 is a Noh drama, the exploration in minute detail of a single action and all its ramifications. The formal construction of the film, the interrelationships and significance of the images, has been woven on an extremely subtle level. Each shot appears only as an isolated piece…appreciated (as) it is understood within the context of the entire mosaic.” – P. Adams Sitney “The third movement of Brakhage’s masterwork; the extension of the bardic art into living film…images of life, regeneration… spring and early morning.” – P. Adams Sitney “The fourth and penultimate…

  • Four Corners

    “Four Corners” was shot in the U.S. in the Navajo Reservation. “Without using words or sensational imagery, this film makes a powerful statement in communicating the horror of environmental pollution” (Jury, 30th Tampere International Short Film Festival).