Film Categories: environment

  • How To Stop Watching a Video That Never Ends

    An abstract inquiry into the subconsciousness of an individual overloaded with the endless amount of options, possibilities and opinions of the world of digital media. Three linearly connected monologues are imitating a timeline as we know it from social media, posing a question about the possibilities of deep contemplation in the time of instant answers and ubiquitous power play of server-made content.

  • Queer Camp Trilogy

    The Queer Camp Trilogy is a series of experimental films exploring the hidden dimensions of queer Japanese American wartime history. This trilogy, made up of Looking For Jiro (2011), Warning Shot (2016), and On the Line (2018), was inspired by first-generation Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by the US government during World War II. These subjects left subtle yet discernible traces of same-sex intimacy or gender nonconformity in the archive, despite the enormous pressure put upon Japanese Americans to accept their imprisonment quietly, prove their patriotic loyalty, and smile for Ansel Adams during their unlawful imprisonment. I approached their enigmatic…

  • Porn Yesterday

    Queer people remember their first experiences with porn.

  • It Matters What

    Absences and translations motivate this experimental animation in an exploration of the methods and materials of reproduction and inscription. The inquiry is set within a framework of practical and critical human relationships with other-than-human-species elucidated by the theorist Donna Haraway. A fragment from Haraway’s essay “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene” is reworked here as a poetic manifesto. Enigmatic found-footage calls into question human violence over animal species. Plant life is both the subject matter of the images and assists the means of photographic reproduction.  The techniques used include in-camera animation, contact prints and phytograms created by the exposure of 16mm film overlaid with plant…

  • GEDE VIZYON

    GEDE VIZYON is a short, experimental documentary shot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as part of the 5th Ghetto Biennale. Produced in collaboration with Marcos Serafim (Brazil), Steevens Simeon (Haiti), Jean-Daniel Lafontant (Haiti), Evelyne Thelus aka Mambo Jacqueline (Haiti) and Jefferson (Zé) Kielwagen. Using a goat and two portable cameras, we captured video footage of the Port-au-Prince Grand Cemetery. Later, in response to this footage, Ougan (priest) Jean-Daniel Lafontant created the poetry that became the narration, and Mambo (priestess) Jacqueline sung the religious songs that became the soundtrack. These audio recordings happened at the house (shrine) of Ogou at Temple Narivéh, in…

  • vulture

    “vulture” sets its sight on farm animals and their surrounding flora. Static shots and slow-moving zooms, follow the grazing animals in their minute inter-species exchanges. When left to roam together the sensibilities of these “beasts” are allowed to surface. The film was shot and processed with various means including flower/plant processing carried out as blooming occurred, from 2016-18. In some cases a salt bath was used for fixing the film which was left soaking in the dark for three days. “Vultures hover over the barn, from high, with razor sharp eyesight, and a keen sense of smell. Together, they stalk…

  • Water once ruled

    Collaging appropriated footage with original imagery, Water once ruled collapses the past, present and future into a single repeating loop. Linking the introduction of satellite imagery with the colonization of our own as well as other planets, the video considers water – and the lack there of – as the distressed resource connecting Mars’ history with Earth’s present and future. There is nothing here to breathe.

  • Great Dismal Swamp

    Contact and underwater microphones are combined with 16mm film to portray the landscape of the Great Dismal Swamp. Once upon a time, George Washington drained it. Then it became the largest refuge for escaped slaves in the US. Edgar Allen Poe hung a picture of it on his wall. Robert Frost went there to commit a romantic suicide, but didn’t.

  • Controller

    A fly compresses time and captures itself on video by triggering a motion-activated surveillance webcam.

  • Ambient Walk #3

    In his series of site-specific installation works, Janzen navigates the back alleys of the city on foot with a video camera focused down on the walking surface. As surfaces rapidly pass by the lens, an unusual perspective of the city is captured. The visual result is highly animated with an endless variety of pattern, line, and colour. The rhythm of the artist’s footsteps and surrounding human and machine activity adds an ambient sound mix. Back alleys present an alternative for travel through the city, outside the traditional grid of streets and sidewalks. They offer a more private view of the…