Film Categories: dance

  • Transition

    A spontaneous piece produced without intellectual supression, allowing the dance movement and visual treatment to take its own course.

  • Treefall

    “Treefall was originally made for a dance performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery, April, 1970. Structured in the form of two loops of high-contrast images of trees falling, reprinted and overlapped.

  • Black & White

    “‘Black & White/Noir et Blanc’ is an eight-minute experimental film poem. The first half is the play of white light on grey background, and coupled with the soundtrack built of amplified bursts of white noise, it is designed to put the spectator into a more receptive mood for the second half – a naked black man dancing, captured sensitively by Raphael’s variable-speed camera. The editing was done right in the Bolex and the rhythm works; it speeds up and slows down just at the right times to create a continuous flow of movement and energy.” – A. Ibranyi-Kiss, Cinema Canada

  • nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

    ASL is not English: it has a syntax of its own. Remaining true to e.e. cummings’ vision, the poem was transliterated metaphorically into the original syntax of the ASL rather than the SEE (Signed Exact English) to express the poet’s linguistic play in words. The poetic hand movements of the ASL/Art-Sign is to emphasize the dexterous quality of cummings’ perspective, to innovate a different kind of visual interpretation, best suitable for an avant-garde poem. This film, based on e.e. cummings’ poem, presents a penetrating, political-linguistic expression of humanity in a twisting, intertwining multi-choreographed collaboration of the several artists in Art-Sign,…

  • House Opera (it’s in the mix)

    This documentary is about the theatrical troup House of Pride, which consists of three main performers whose unique style combines both theatre and club cultures. House of Pride’s work transcends the usual boundaries of nightclub entertainment and performance art, bringing a new design of performance to theatrical spaces. The content of the performance smoothly blends together universal issues of gender and sexuality, individualism, spirituality, and the environment in a live theatrical show. House of Pride is a Montreal collective which combines outrageously athletic club-vogue-influenced choreography with searing confessional monologues.

  • Light in Our Lizard Bellies, The

    Through choreography and performance by Susanna Hood, and editing and effects in exposure caused by hand-processing, “The Light in Our Lizard Bellies” reflects the intensities that discombobulate us as we go through change and face parts of ourselves previously denied or unknown. “A beautiful capturing of the triumph of the human spirit.” – Barbara Goslawski (Toronto film critic) “I have never seen a dance film work so magically. It is cinematic instead of just choreographic. The hand processing is rich, pushing the film past time. The texture and contrast do that poetic thing of transporting you. Transcendent.” – James Herbert…

  • Vibrant Marvels

    “We did not come into this world. We came out of it…” – Lyall Watson, Gifts of the Unknown We rarely think of the past which occurred before our birth, yet our body and mind seem to remember it well. “Vibrant Marvels” reaches back into our subconscious memories and reminds us of the innateness of dance and music, that resonates in us from generation to generation and which we first encountered while we were in the womb. The membrane of our mother’s belly acted as a resonating drum to which rhythms we responded, as we pushed to become a part…

  • Sea of Souls

    This film is about a personal shamanic journey. This is also a haunting visual poem. Two souls in one world, one breath, one life, one realm. The underwater realm becomes the environment where this merging of souls takes place. The dance emulates the movement of water. Dancer Penny Couchie moves like the ocean. She becomes the ocean and the life within it. According to the Haida legend, the undersea realm is where human souls resort after death. Using this statement as a concept, exploration of the human soul is investigated. We will be bridged together, into one living being, yet…

  • My Life in Dance

    A romp across the filmmaker’s dance floor of life. A personal reflection on film, dance and living queer.

  • Dance

    This film begins with points of light defining a dark space out of which a female dancer (Vivienne Palmer) emerges dressed in a semi-transparent green dress. Her dance is visually “echoed” by close-up superimpositions of her arms, legs and feet, and then later by her distant figure seeming to mimic and/or perhaps to control her fore-grounded, sometimes black-lit, image. She often pauses thoughtfully in her dance, breaks step, walks away, etc. defining the perimeters of the dance. Finally she appears naked, midst dance, and takes heraldic stance at end.