Film Categories: Anthropocene

  • Dam’d

    Using 16mm film altered in part by algae and zebra mussels, ‘Dam’d’ illuminates parallel behaviours between human and invasive species and their impact on waterways. The mutation of film footage acts as a metaphor for the erosion and evolution of the aquatic ecosystems it records.

  • Shifting Baseline

    Motion picture film decomposes in a bath of toxic cyanobacteria collected from a shore where children are playing. A child’s piano improvisation plays over the bacterial impressions in memory of a fleeting moment. ‘Shifting Baseline’ combines ecological and filmic processes to capture and animate an environment that is rapidly slipping away.

  • Hag’s Taper

    The many names of the herb mullein include hag’s taper, Jupiter’s rod, flannel leaf, velvet plant, felt-wort, tinder plant, candlewick plant, witch’s candle, lady’s foxglove, candlewick plant, torches, cowboy toilet paper, and more. Brought by European settlers to what is now known as Canada over 250 years ago, mullein is native to parts of Europe and Asia. The introduced plant was valued for its medicinal abilities and its use as a fish poison. Today, it is considered a noxious weed in so-called Alberta. This video was shot in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta where mullein thrives in the disturbed sites including…

  • 7FF on¢idia

    In ancient China the skin of the tiger was the representation of “continuous changing”; in Mayan world through the path of Bolom Chon (Jaguar) they could read constellations: the dance of cosmos. Fluxes are grouped in the film; spotted-jaguar, “7 pancadas”, speckled plants, ounce (oz), “golden spider”. Matter-energy-information varies. Side by side communication, surplus value of code. Commodities, bit coins, mountains of data. 7FF on¢idia: real impossibilia of capital life.

  • Petal to the Metal

    This hand-processed 16mm film reflects on botanical animism. It is a song written for night-crawlers, compost, and shadows, inspired by human flower-lust. Water, fire, earth and air are interwoven with the garden’s creature crew. The work draws a parallel between the photographic alchemy of cinematic experiments and the photosynthetic processes of plants. Honourable mention, Top Canadian Short Jury Award, GIRAF 17 (2021).

  • The Names of Things

    A bed-bound woman’s year passes as a day: her time is no longer measured by the increments of a clock but by the quality of weather outside her window. Objects emerge and merge in the gloom; the old woman dissolves and reforms. Her muteness, her glaucomas and her inactivity render things indeterminate. By naming objects, animal and phenomena we reduce and delineate them, and so separate ourselves from the world around us. Shot at ISO 409,000 the image is granulated by pixelation and noise and any discreteness an object or thing might possess is confused by the digital processes of…

  • Island Cowboy

    Island Cowboy is a documentary that follows a Canadian beekeeper on Prince Edward Island during one of his last years of work. At the age of 68, Stan Sandler would like to retire, but impending threats to his island home’s ecosystem threaten the future of the bees, and the health of the environment. The relationship between a beekeeper’s labour and the economy of the island’s blueberry crop is explored through a season of beekeeping, as we get an intimate look at Stan and the “bee cowboys”.

  • Transit – Destination

    Cities are where people tend to nest. This is where we can engage in the greatest range of pursuits while being provided a reasonable likelihood of day to day sustenance. While not apparent for the most part, cities require far flung resources making them islands or something akin to a space station. Cities are also de facto barriers for many other animal species, especially those that require migration routes to survive. Note: The voices are Kent Tate and a friendly passerby engaging in a conversation about birds while he was filming some office towers.

  • Pinhole Park

    “Pinhole Park” was created using a 35mm film tin modified into an outward-looking 59-pinhole camera that registers images on a single film loop mounted in the tin. Each loop is exposed in one moment with 59 pinhole “lenses” to create as many distinct images that, when presented in series, create a panning of the landscape in various directions. The work was exposed on outdated black-and-white 35mm print stock acquired from Archives Canada discards, and processed by hand in Caffenol chemistry, a less environmentally impactful developer made with coffee, vitamin C, and washing soda. The film and photographs document a city…

  • temporal assemblages

    temporal assemblages is an ecological video poem exploring human presence and absence in natural and built environments. Although the performers in the film are directed within the frame, the locations serve as canvasses for improvisation and the landscape is an equal player in the narrative of the scene. A meditation on impermanence and the transience of place, the title is inspired by assemblage art where fragments of existing artistic objects are reconstituted into new artworks. The filmmaker here samples her own archive of media materials produced over several decades of practice, from analogue photography, Super-8mm and 16mm film recordings, early…