Language: English

  • Woven Account

    After the artist’s own gaybashing in the Bay Area, they wondered what it would take for their story to make the news. Allegra went on to research reported instances of hate violence targeting LGBTQIA2s+ individuals in the archives of 16 local print and online newspapers. After going through nearly two years of archives – the artist discovered only 33 articles detailing individual hate crimes or stories concerning hate crimes legislation for the broader LGBTQIA2s+ community in the Bay Area. Where they could get their hands on the physical news articles detailing hate crimes, the artist spun that newsprint by hand…

  • D Cum Pose

    This animation is about one’s vanity. It’s a take on Cinderella and Dorian Grey…

  • Detour

    An experimental film which uses metaphor and simile. Through comedic intention the viewer is placed on a journey with the fillmmaker, following in the tradition of Maya Deren, where the filmmaker himself is transposed into a labyrinth of visuals to express a coming-of-age or a transformation. Shot on a phone with a shoestring budget, Tolyak attempts to convey a message just with things around him and through what he finds on the road.

  • Canadian Gothic

    Johnny gets more than he bargained for when his new neighbor moves in.

  • Akedellic

    An unfinished experimental film about the horrors of war. sound will be added.

  • ‘The Heat ( Series #1)

    A journey on Vancouver Island’s Victoria City to collect the facts regarding forest fires, a changing climate and what the real experts have to say about the conditions on Vancouver Island and the areas in and around Victoria City. My team and I traveled around Victoria Canada to talk to and examine the state of the forests of this Island. We will interview people in Forestry, Fire management, the common folk on the street, the Fire departments in each city, and experts that reside on this island. Series #2- 2021 Australia The next step is to interview experts and individuals…

  • Salt River Water Walk

    In February 2020, Sharon Day (Ojibwe) led a group of Water Walkers through the Arizona desert to walk for the Salt River. Through animation and live footage, this documentary travels with the Salt River Water Walkers, describing this Indigenous-led ceremony as it creates community and builds relationships with the earth through the shared goal to care for the water. The project was organized by the Museum of Walking. The film was made possible through the Museum of Walking, the Institute for Desert Humanities at Arizona State University, and Indigenous People’s Task Force.

  • Exercises for Being Close to You: A Story for the Arctic Refuge

    Exercises for Being Close to You is an experimental documentary that follows a group of hikers through Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The team is in search of the Porcupine Caribou herd in hopes of collecting stories that could help push back on oil exploration and drilling on the caribou’s birthing grounds. The narrator, admitting to a perverse desire to be close to everything, wants nothing more than to spoon a caribou. As the film culminates in anticipation of the “money shot”, the audience is pushed to evaluate its expectations of nature films. Meanwhile, the expedition team is left to…

  • Avanti!

    “Avanti!” is inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s writings: as an idealistic young man, a romantic, a father, and a revolutionary. Throughout the work I explore themes of translation and research. What happens in the shift from detached researcher to impassioned participant? “Avanti!” considers what we lose when we reduce a person to only their thinking, when we abstract them from their lives. Image description: Blurry black-and-white close-up of a person’s face, yelling or laughing (?), with eyes closed and open mouth.

  • Even the Sun Practices Time

    A bedtime story for the chronically aging. — In “Even the Sun Practices Time” I am exploring the creative possibilities and limitations of misunderstanding, as well as ways of communicating with the empirically absent, divine or earthly. I bring together multiple found footage sources to listen across purposes, forming a kind of speculative listening. My hope is that the film becomes a kind of third space that allows me to access a place outside of forgiveness and condemnation. Found footage gives me a collaborator. I am working with this footage not to decontextualize it, or detourn it, but to have…