Film Categories: film studies

  • X

    A profound and powerful experimental, personal film of one woman’s despair, rage and exhibitionism; a baroque fugue of identity chanting growing from women’s pain to a holistic, self-healing naming ritual.

  • 5 Cents a Copy

    This film explores the multitude of effects that can be achieved using nothing more than a photocopy machine.

  • Brakhage

    Stan Brakhage is a legend, possibly the most important filmmaker of the avant-garde, and one of the greatest artists of our time. Since 1952, at the age of nineteen, Brakhage has created over 300 films, ranging from several seconds to several hours, constantly and consistently redefining the shape of film art. “Brakhage” explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendour of his films, his magical personal charm, his aesthetic fellow travellers, and the influence his work has had on generations of other creators. ‘“Excellent! A reverent, hagiographic, even mystical portrait of the canonical avant-gardist.” – Ed…

  • Hoolboom

    “Hoolboom” is a film that Arts Toronto commissioned local filmmaker Wrik Mead to make based on his impressions of fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom. With some collaboration from Mike, Wrik has produced a film about the body, self-awareness, and the art of film.

  • Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)

    “Snow’s use of the dolly shot in ‘Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)’ vividly – and comically – emphasizes the physical effects of the camera’s forward movement, in contrast to the purely optical effects of the zoom in ‘Wavelength.’ In ‘Breakfast,’ the camera dollies toward an untidy still life of breakfast items and slowly pushes the objects along the table until the tip over, tumble off, or are smashed against the wall at the far end of the table.” – William C. Wees, Light Moving in Time

  • View Never Changes, The

    Seething grain and swirling textures of Super 8 processed in a pail. Film as memory … an elaborate reconstruction perpetually shifting through the course of time. And so is this … a personal recollection of the intensity of what it may have been like to be a child. “Carefully composed as both a gentle and highly critical portrait of the filmmaker’s relationship with his father, this beautifully hand-processed film manages to offer a balanced study heavy with the weight of family history and family ties.” – Alex Mackenzie

  • 1:1

    This cameraless animation is about the 1:1 relationship between sound & picture: the 1:1 concept became the structure for the entire piece and spawns further thought about relationships between elements in cinema (artist to medium, viewer to screen, projector to film).

  • Luminous

    Film as history, propaganda, time travel, and the movement of light.

  • Death to All Film

    This essay on the passion and predicament of Soviet avant-garde filmmaker Dziga Vertov is constructed with playfully meticulous adherence to the Word of Vertov and the concept of the documentary essay-film. Vertov’s obsession and despair are explored through a montage of diary excerpts and challenging imagery, fully supported by appropriate bibliographical referencing and a comprehensive index.

  • Flora’s Film

    In 1873, Eadweard Muybridge, commonly referred to as “the father of the motion picture,” succeeded in photographically freezing a horse mid-gallop. One year later, he shot and killed his wife’s lover. Using an evocative collection of found footage and sounds, Wilson channels the voice of Flora Muybridge, imagining her response to her husband’s act and subsequent acquittal at trial.