Film Categories: Abstraction

  • 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.

  • Freak Folks

    Struggling with anxious thoughts, six individuals wander alone through the city in the late hours of the night. “Freak Folks” is an introspective and therapeutic experience that celebrates the human resilience and emotional connections between apparent strangers.

  • Wood and Metal Bars

    A meditative experience through colour, form, and sound. The animation was created by painting ink directly onto 16mm film. This music video was created for Toronto chamber music composer Frank Horvat. The musical composition is performed by Canadian percussionist Beverley Johnston. Image description: An abstract image featuring blue tones in various textures, with a black-outlined circular shape in the centre and bright pink blotches at the bottom.

  • Engine Complex: Bridge/Seed

    A fraught passage of the camera’s eye through fantastical architectural and psychological spaces. Somewhere between a body and a building, the lens tumbles and lurches through time and space, caught between observation and escape. Themes of construction blend with surgical examination while the joys and pains of discovery rattle with a search-and-rescue-like urgency. Where are we? Co-directed by Bryan Morello and Matthew Endler, this work emerges from a multi-level structure (called the Engine Complex) built in their shared studio. It is a playground for collaborative overlap and hosts a wide spectrum of playful set design and experimental performance activities.

  • P L U M E

    Fingers pluck fallen evidence of flight; placed and traced to make avian light.

  • A Nice Big Zero for You

    Doughnut destruction that started as a lark but got a bit grim. Also an ode to the JK Optical Printer, and a meditation on human cruelty and expendability.

  • Field Trip

    “Field Trip” is a travel diary on the American social landscape. The images consist of visual research for future film projects and were accumulated during my many location scouting trips to the United States between 1980 and 1995. Over time, I have come to regard this photographic archive as a collection of works of historical and personal value. Over the years, I began to rework the photographs. The more I handled and touched them, the less I thought of them as photographs and the more I saw them as something that could be hand-shaped, altered, transformed and re-imagined. With three…

  • HK Uprising

    A tribute to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong that are taking place three decades after the Tiananmen Square uprising. Note: This film can be displayed as a multi-channel installation with May 35.

  • The Beautiful Room is Empty

    “Haddad’s The Beautiful Room is Empty explores the loaded memories of space through his aunt, Marie, (re)visiting her childhood home and recalling the abuse she endured there. […] What have the walls been listening to? What have they absorbed, retained, and released upon a return, a farewell?” – Sarah Sarofim, Canadian Art