Film Categories: found footage

  • Water

    A film exploring the impulsive nature of radiation, Water is the last dream of a dying man. Using brilliant blue and black images from cross-processed 16mm, the film explores the end of the 3 Chernobyl divers – three men who sacrificed their lives to drain a pool of radioactive hydrogen peroxide beneath the burning reactor no. 4 during the Chernobyl disaster. Mutating out of darkness in to a piercing blue, Water drifts under the surface of consciousness and into final memories. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Sodium Lamp Study

    A technical experiment about exposure and an interview of a woman’s experience with radioactive ablation therapy for thyroid cancer, Sodium Lamp Study is a meditation on exposure, treatment, and the unseen emotional effects of radiation. The visual element of Sodium Lamp Study explores the photographic concept of reciprocity failure – when the exposure of an image is separated in to multiple exposures rather than a single exposure with the same light strength, the results become unreliable. In a similar way, patients facing the treatment of thyroid cancer are presented with an option of a single dose of radioactive iodine, or…

  • Cowboys and Iodine

    An attempt to tame the atomic frontier, Cowboys and Iodine is a fever dream involving the masculine bravado and seldom-discussed gender shaming used to encourage men to volunteer as liquidators for the cleanup of the Chernobyl disaster. Employing dip, spray and smudge techniques to replicate the different methods of radiation exposure the men experienced. The film also employs a split negative/reversal process to reflect the methods that waves of radiation enter the body. Cowboys and Iodine blends subtext, social stigma and personal aspiration to construct the internal contemplation of a man going to war with the atom. The full-length version…

  • Cure

    Cure is a document from a time when radiation was touted as a solution for everything- for beauty, power, perhaps even for a broken heart. A drifting composition, Cure uses gently applied “radiation” techniques to mimic the application of a precious beauty cream. It completes the look with whispers of the promise of radium and the solutions it brings, floating in and out like traces of perfume. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Dust

    Referencing Yayoi Kusama’s concept of self-obliteration, Dust is a memory document, a self-portrait in a moment one prefers to forget. Using techniques to erase portions of the image, the film is a mutating, disintegrating echo of the biblical references in The Weight of Snow. Dust references genesis; we are dust, and to dust we return. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Lion

    A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion explores the Chernobyl disaster and the nature of radiation, recollection, and personal history. Lion navigates atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and a cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amidst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. This conceptually arranged film album is composed of seven works on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. The series combines memory, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations…

  • NORTH SOUTH

    Reworking recently rediscovered 15-year-old footage, NORTH SOUTH is a personal and political allegory of freedom and repression in Singapore. It draws an analogy between bipolar-altered reality to life in a prosperous fascist regime (the bridge it was filmed on was a then newly-constructed link between the state university and an army officer camp). NORTH SOUTH was an experiment in the expressiveness of form and rejection of over-determined Hollywood / social realist narrative taught in Singapore. Central to its structure and intent was the foregrounding of typically background elements (montage and music) to explore their expressive potential, as well as the…

  • ars memorativa

    ars memorativa is an experimental documentary in four chapters that examines what is left behind when someone passes away and how memory traces emerge from the remaining artifacts and memories. the four people intersected with the directors life in a variety of ways and their stories are shared in a mix of forms: hand processed celluloid, digital animation, audio interview and home movies.

  • Former Models

    A public and private history undo themself(ves) as they mutually encounter the trials of Labor, Love, Loss and Planned Obsolescence. A body desires its Other: a simulation is transgressed and the ultimate price is paid- “No-body is above The Law.” In this docu-narrative, the tragic story of Milli Vanilli’s Robert Pilatus and his descent into a post-racial and post-gendered pure image is told through appropriated video footage. A fabricated narrative conceived by the artist collides with Pilatus’ public biography in a technologically mediated flash of desire and information. This video is dedicated to the very real life of Robert Pilatus, 1965-1998.  

  • Meer der Dünste (Sea of Vapors)

    A cascade of images cut frame by frame flow into an allegory of the lunar cycle.