Film Categories: Landscape

  • Coronation Park

    CORONATION PARK is constructed from haunting, sometimes abstract, cool blue shots of bare maple and oak trees in winter. The images are paired with the single word breathe. Inspired by the many languages spoken in the city of Toronto where the film was shot, the words rhythmically appear then disappears, each time in a different language. This pairing of text and image suggests a plea for the trees to “breathe”, to come back to life, to transform themselves from bare branches to the green leaves of spring. The winter leafless trees also resemble human body parts, limbs and veins, thus…

  • Chaises, Les

    “With Vincent Grenier’s LES CHAISES (2008), the suspended moment is loosened and stretched, and like the wind that blows throughout, there’s no sense of where it starts or stops. The HD views, which should quiet once and for all any remaining skeptics of the medium, are appropriately breathtaking; under the rustling leaves of a quiet afternoon subtle gradations of light and shadow, red and green, form. “In one recurring shot, Grenier fixes on the vinyl surface of a red chair, inviting us to sit and get lost in the image. The mottled reds, seemingly endless in their variation, fill the…

  • Pro Agri

    “Pro Agri” is a record of a tobacco processing plant near Città di Castello in Umbria, central italy. The building was filmed in time-lapse, at a rate of one frame every twelve seconds, from one hour before sunset to one hour afterwards.

  • this is not an anchor, this boat is not an anchor

    Through a dense mist we emerge into a foggy marshland. Slowly and achingly a mysterious landscape is revealed. Foghorns and sharp cuts jolt the meandering sense of place and memory, creating a sense of unease and anxiety within (Images Festival). (Note: First minute is a one-minute still frame.)

  • Tamalpais

    Shot on Mount Tamalpais, a spatial matrix replaces temporal causality with contiguous space. A view of landscape is taken apart, to be reconstituted through memory. The grid, a reference to the “veil of threads” invented by Albrecht Dürer as an aid for perspective drawing – to transfer vision to a sheet of paper – is used for an opposite effect – to disperse a landscape across time. The viewer is asked to remember the space as it passes and reconstitute it from memory, actively connecting the image across space and time.

  • Gladstone

    A portrait of a street corner in flux.

  • Limits of What We Know, The

    In 1993, Amy Bodman took a small crew to Zimbabwe to make a film about land as a living entity. Quietly told through the voice of Zimbabweans, THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW documents the changing landscape of Zimbabwe and its people’s relationship to it. Part travel log, part environmental study and part meditation on life itself, the film reveals nature’s mysterious tenacity in the face of great change. Although the film initially appears to be a portrait of Zimbabwe, THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW culminates as a heart-felt picture of our changing world as it struggles to compensate…

  • Conchitas

    Slippery, colourful gummy bears and hundreds of little conches are used to construct a barrier against the stillness of a summer day. Two landscapes are juxtaposed, one of Georgian Bay in Lake Huron and the other of Veracruz Beach in Panama City. Two voices narrate an intimate conversation about the fear of dangers hidden deep in salty waters. Spanish with English subtitles.

  • Our Future Is Bright

    This atmospheric short film alludes to a catastrophic event that has left two women grief-stricken and isolated in a barren snow-covered wilderness. Their intimate life together is shaken when they discover a man lying unconscious in the frozen terrain. For Bria, the older of the two women, he represents hope for the future and the possibility of a child. For Renee, he threatens to disrupt a life that has given her refuge from the traumas of violence. Renee must ultimately decide between having a child and her personal desire to remain free from emotional attachment. Canadian Society of Cinematographers Award…

  • Lot 22, Concession 5

    Hand-processed 16mm film imagery, tinted, toned, and transformed, is combined with memory fragments of a rural past to create a visual poem about family, place, and time. Filmed at Philip Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario in 2008, with sound design by Edmund Eagan. The title refers to the lot and concession number of my great-grandfather’s farm in Westport, Ontario, as recorded in the 1911 census. The voice is a fragment of the past, taken from an old recording of my father, Leonard McCann, who passed away in 1992. Selected screenings: 8th International Festival Signes de Nuit, Paris,…