Film Categories: film studies

  • Opus 40

    “Opus 40” is about repetition: repetition in working and living, repetition through multiplicity and series, repetition to form pattern and rhythm, repetition in order and in revealing. “Opus 40” was filmed in the Enterprise Foundry, Sackville, New Brunswick, and has excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s writings.

  • Parcelle

    The French term “parcelle” refers to a fragment, particle or bit. Filmed frame-by-frame in the camera, the film rests upon the alternate appearance and duration of tiny coloured squares and circles placed on a black background. Inserted in series between plain white or coloured frames, the particular arrangement of the items on separate frames forms, when projected on the screen, certain visual relationships producing a specific perceptual experience.

  • PATH

    Employing a simple three-part structure, “PATH” is about personal experience and the interpretation of that experience. Both humorous and serious, the film is a cross-Toronto exploration, expansively taking in a wide variety of people, events and situations. In creating a dynamic web of associations, “PATH” invites participation in the act of perception. The film’s structure works like this: Davis is filmed connecting dots on a street map; next she walks that distance on the street, filming as she goes; then she recalls and interprets what she has seen in memory sequences. The street sequences have a variety of different rhythms…

  • Permutations and Combinations

    Aleatory procedures are used to create movement at the points of fusion of the still images of which the film is constituted. For this reason, all movements within the film are completely reversible. This reversibility is extended into the film’s overall structure, as the film is formed into a loop – a closed container for the film’s chance elements. Such a structure, I believe, results in the complete elimination of all vestiges of drama from the film. Hence this film is a companion piece to “She Is Away.” The sounds of the film though determined in their occurrence by specific…

  • philter

    A visual essay based on the sound piece “Toxic Philter.”

  • Plastic Surgery

    The film draws an analogy between the cutting and suturing of the human body and the reconstruction of the world through film. Using optical printing techniques, it connects diverse elements in a dream-like flow: a vision of mind at play amid the anxieties of our society. It ‘s also an operation on our image systems, including cinema.

  • It’s Not Brakhage

    It’s Not Brakhage is a feature-length parafiction film, structured around an unnamed narrator’s investigation of a mysterious film reel, believed to be a lost work by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Shrouded in speculation and actively contested, the film reel is believed to be the sole remaining artifact from a cancelled 1959 film festival, co-organized by Brakhage and military-industrial giant DuPont chemical. The story follows the narrator’s forensic deconstruction of the film reel’s history, sifting through a patchwork of theories and speculations that have arisen since its discovery, and connecting the artifact to DuPont’s wider networks of military-industrial research and artistic…

  • Pocket Call

    Isolated in an old house, a man sees his daily life merge with that of a female presence that gradually invades his space. Trapped within his own home, he must confront this strangely familiar ghost.

  • Let’s Rap

    “Women, speak your mind!” says one of the rappers in this collage of women of all ages and races who use the directness and power of rap music to express their views. These women, who rap in their own words about their own lives and beliefs present us with a lively, musical and often comical look at key issues facing women today. Let’s Rap! brims with energy, from its dynamic editing, witty set designs and colourful costumes right down to the pulsating beat which underlies its enthusiastic performances. Let by the powerful Montreal rap artist Freaky D, one of Quebec’s…