Film Categories: cameraless

  • traveling thru with eyes closed tight (map #2 – january 03 thru january 06)

    a yellow field meets clear blue skies. a mist of water over bright green grass. a well worn sidewalk in grey and white. a lone black crow on a sandy beach. a lowering sun fades into the sea. Made with the support of LIFT & the New Directions in Cinema Series, 2006.

  • hysteria

    An unstable community leads to accusations and panic. Re-considering the Salem witch trials of 1692. Then doesn’t always seem so far off from now. “In ‘hysteria’, Christina Battle refers obliquely to the contemporary political climate using schoolbook illustrations of the Salem witch trials. She works the surface of the film in distinctive ways, lifting the emulsion to add new wrinkles to the image one frame at a time.” – Chris Gehman & Andréa Picard, Toronto International Film Festival Made with the support of LIFT & the New Directions in Cinema Series, 2006. Selected screenings: Toronto International Film Festival, 2006

  • three hours, fifteen minutes before the hurricane struck

    Inspired by the diorama-like boxes of Joseph Cornell, and with text taken from victims of hurricane Katrina, “three hours, fifteen minutes before the hurricane struck” imagines moments just before a violent weather storm. “three hours, fifteen minutes before the hurricane struck” is part of a larger project titled “weather series one (hurricanes)”, a mixed-media installation with works on paper, film, video and small objects. Made with the support of LIFT & the New Directions in Cinema Series, 2006.

  • Struggling in Paradise

    Amidst information overload, communication overkill and mediated emotions, Paradise, as a state of complete happiness, remains a fleeting promise, a state of mind impossible to achieve. Some seek refuge in the creative process, some multiply “various emotions” while other just drive along on the road to Paradise, thinking there is “nothing to worry about.” In the end, it is just all about “the drive.”

  • Going Back Home

    Turmoil of unsheltered childhood; the dwelling as self. “Louise Bourque’s ‘Going Back Home’ conveys a sense of loss and upheaval with just a few images.” – Steve Anker and Kathy Geritz, program notes, San Francisco International FIlm Festival, 2002 “The disasters of life can make it hard to go home. Bourque’s brief, beautiful, and affecting film goes by so quickly it’s printed twice on the reel, so you can get a second look.” – Program notes, Images Festival, 2001 “To the scratchy sounds of an old music box… ‘Going Back Home’ weaves snippets of old reels of houses collapsing, fires…

  • Imprint

    “Louise Bourque’s ‘Imprint’ focuses obsessively on home-movie images of her family’s house, which seems gloomily oppressive, almost filling the frame; she repeats the images with various alterations – tinted, bleached, partly scraped away – as if attacking the place, turning its darkness into light.” – Fred Camper, The Reader, Chicago, April 16 1999 “‘Imprint’… throttles and exhausts a particular memory-image (a family on a porch in an ambiguous position – good-bye/hello, reuniting/reinforcing/celebrating?) and traces its corrosion and dissolution even as it intensifies it physically. Dyes, zip-a-toning, a weird daguerrotype shiny effect, and ripping makes for a very concrete trip.” –…

  • Fissures

    A film about forgetting and remembering, about past presences and the traces they leave. In making this piece, Bourque literally distorted the personal home movie images appearing on the film plane through various manipulations in the process of doing her own low-tech contact printing. The images warp and fluctuate, creating a distorted space of fleeting apparitions, like re-surfacing memories. The footage was hand-processed and solarized as well as hand-coloured through toning. “A very short film that meshes the beautifully overlapping style of Bruce Baillie with rhythm and sound to create a meditation in blue.” – Stephen Brophy, artsMedia, March15 –…

  • Jours en fleurs

    “Jours en fleurs” is a reclamation of flower-power in which images of trees in springtime bloom are subjected to the floriferous ravages of menarcheal substance in a gestation of decay. The title is based on an expression from my coming-of-age in Acadian French Canada where girls would refer to having their menstrual periods as “être dans ses fleurs.” As a result of incubation in menstrual blood for several months, the original images inscribed on the emulsion undergo violent alterations. The shedding of the unfertilized womb depredates the fertilized blossoms and substitutes its own dark beauty. – LB “Those few shorts…

  • Self Portrait Post Mortem

    An unearthed time capsule consisting of footage of the maker’s youthful self – an “exquisite corpse” with nature as collaborator. Bourque buried random out-takes from her first three films (all staged productions dealing with her family) in the backyard of her ancestral home (adjoining the grounds of a former cemetery) with the ambivalent intentions of both safe-keeping and unloading them (she was relocating). Upon examining the footage five years later she found that the material contained images of herself captured during the making of her first film. That discovery seemed handed over like a gift and prompted the making of…

  • Phont Cycle

    This short film is about the consequences of my personal choices and the lessons that I’m doomed to repeat. I have chosen, as subject, to animate the Tibetan letter “AH” in the traditional U-Chan form to demonstrate – in the way of a simple visual metaphor – some of the differences between Karma and my freedom to choose. This film is constructed as a visual “process loop” and may be screened once or repeatedly. Sacred chants by Tibetan Buddhist monks. Colour by Technicolor, Montreal.