Film Categories: comedy

  • Presents

    “The apparent vertical scratch in celluloid that opens ‘Presents’ literally opens into a film within the film. When its figures awakens into a woman in a ‘real’ set, the slapstick satire of structural film begins. It is not the camera that moves, but the whole set, in this first of three material ‘investigations’ of camera movement. In the second, the camera literally invades the set; a Plexiglas sheet in front of the dolly crushes everything in its sight as it zooms through space. Finally, this monster of formalism pushes through the wall of the set and the film cuts to…

  • Proud Drivers of Canada

    Fear of driving. Using every excuse not get a driver’s license doesn’t work anymore and with the assistance of a “gay friendly” driving school, the protagonist moves slowly toward his goal.

  • Punch Me in the Stomach

    “Life imitating art” is how comic Deb Filler describes the connection between her real life family and the characters she depicts in her offbeat 36-character solo show “Punch,” which balances humour, love, passion and pathos. Recreating the diverse eclectic experiences of her far-flung family by magically transforming herself into character after character, this is the story of a Holocaust survivor wih a difference. These stories mould themselves into a comic repertoire which is daring and delicate. Her comic talent is best described as Jackie Mason meets Tracey Ullman, with the British comedienne’s flair for mimicry and the Lower East Side…

  • Bad Brownies

    A mockumentary of memoires of childhood transgression. Former Brownies recall their lives in the organization, and two modern-day recruits – one a good Brownie and one a bad one – demonstrate different reactions to the rules and rituals of the Brownie circle.

  • Reading Between the Lines

    Reading the replies to a personal ad she has placed, a woman imagines herself in relationships with three different men. The film uses both layering and fragmentation to weave a web of associations and create a dynamic and fast-moving flow of images and events. Quick flashbacks, like momentary thoughts, accumulate. The reading voice is the constant, a soft steady interior voice around which the images dance and leap. The most dramatic moments of a given scenario are played out in a realistic fashion, and some scenarios, differently imagined, are repeated with each of the men: the restaurant, the dance, the…

  • Bangs

    A comedy about a young Chinese-Canadian girl obsessed with her large egg-like forehead. “A deftly funny work.” – Peter Goddard,The Toronto Star

  • Rock Video

    Poking a little fun at “rock video,” this film uses real rocks that are resilient and amusing.

  • BBQ Muslims

    In this short comedy, two Canadian Muslim brothers are sleeping in their home when the barbecue in the backyard blows up. They are immediately suspected of being dangerous Middle Eastern terrorists and their neighbourhood turns against them. This film was inspired by events following the Oklahoma City bombing.

  • Sisters of the Silver Scalpel

    A comic documentary about a team of researchers from television’s “Wilderness on Parade” and their expedition to Newfoundland to study a vanishing species of nun life known as “Sisters of the Silver Scalpel.” This “migrant prayer group” is accosted by a liberated coffee show hostess and force-fed hypnotizing birth control pills. The film ends with the capture of a young nun for placement in a zoo. Presented in the straightforward, television documentary fashion of the late 1950s, the use of clichés and exaggerations pokes fun at both style and subject.

  • Slap Happy Jim

    James Anderson’s exuberant paper cell animation “Slap Happy Jim” features a skinny man in a canoe (with a bicycle on his head) who faces all manners of unexpected travails.