Film Categories: history

  • Masters of Rhythm the Afro-Peruvian Way

    “…a rare and delightful glimpse….capture(s) the artistry, love and philosophy….” (John Santos, percussionist, seven times Grammy nominee) Masters of Rhythm, of filmmaker Eve A. Ma, has screened in five countries on three continents, and won awards in the USA and Germany. A natural outgrowth of my earlier documentary about Afro-Peruvians, it features percussionists Lalo Izquierdo, Cotito and Huevito. Performancs include two original music compositions and a dance form called Afro-Peruvian zapateo, with fancy footwork similar to tap dance.

  • 10th Frame

    Memories are a confluence of the personal and the collective, the secret and the shared. Shaped by time and space, memories alter perceptions of what is remembered as well as what is forgotten. Pope John Paul II arrived at the Vancouver International Airport on Sept. 18, 1984. Days before his arrival, Transport Canada urged people to stay away, stating that there would be “absolutely no opportunity” to view Pope Paul at the airport. A local reporter at the time remarked that “You’d take 10 frames and you’d never get him, and then suddenly his face would appear between the two…

  • Jatun LLaxta, Noh Kaah…

    A short experimental film that explores ancient native cities in America. Images of Machu Pichu, Sacsayhuaman, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Mesa Verde had been blow up from Super 8 to 16 mm, handheld developed and reticulated to create an evocative view of our past.

  • Mach Stem

    Part one in a series, Mach Stem is an essay about skincare, depression, memory loss, and the atomic bomb. Formulated from a discarded master’s thesis film, Mach Stem records the shadow of a long depression and the process of convalescence. Exploring sites of research, memory, and legacy, the film travels between continents to piece together one’s own identity that was previously lost at sea.

  • Ruines

    Sur l’autoroute 15, juste à l’extérieur de Montréal, se dresse un monument à la Révolution tranquille : les écrans en décomposition du Ciné Parc Laval, ouvert en 1971, l’année où les ciné-parcs ont marqué l’histoire du Québec. En 1947, sous la pression de l’Église catholique, les ciné-parcs sont interdits au Québec. C’était la tentative de l’Église de réglementer le sexe en dehors de la sphère domestique. À l’origine un drive-in à 2 salles de cinéma, le Ciné Parc Laval est rapidement devenu 4 écrans en raison de sa popularité. Ce film utilise des segments de Frissons (1975) de David Cronenberg…

  • 581 Bloor Street West

    A chunk of Toronto’s real estate, a historical landmark in fact, as it sits, in a state of sad transition.

  • Sermons and Sacred Pictures

    SERMONS AND SACRED PICTURES profiles Reverend L.O. Taylor, a Memphis-based Baptist minister who in the 1930s and 40s built a fiery reputation by lacing his sermons with parables, fables and dramatic visual descriptions. Taylor was also an inspired photographer and filmmaker with a keen interest in preserving a visual and aural record of the fabric of black American life. He photographed and filmed businesses and schools, the National Baptist Convention, baptisms, funerals, and individuals in the quiet dignity of their everyday lives. Over the years he compiled an extraordinary record of Southern black life before the Civil Rights movement. This…

  • Investigation of a Flame

    On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters, including a nurse, an artist and three priests, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. “Investigation of a Flame” is an intimate, experimental documentary portrait of the Catonsville Nine, this disparate band of resisters who chose to break the law in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience. A series of informal, yet charged conversations with members of the group encourages viewers to ask their own questions about the relevance of such events today. How did the photos, trial…

  • States of UnBelonging

    The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli friend. Together, they reveal Revital’s story through her films, news reports, and interviews, culminating in heartbreaking footage of children discussing the violence they’ve witnessed. Without taking sides or casting blame, the film becomes a cine-essay on fear and filmmaking, tragedy and transformation, violence and the land of Israel/Palestine. RECENT NEWS! Oxford University…

  • The Last Happy Day

    A portrait of a doctor who saw the worst of society and ran The Last Happy Day is an experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on the translation of “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin, an eccentric…