Film Categories: Landscape

  • Goodbye

    Incorporating meditations on male sexuality and personal exchanges, “Goodbye” travels through physical memory to reveal the marrow that grows beneath. Placed in a surreal yet pastoral surrounding, “Goodbye” is a letter explored through the journey of agarwood, or jin-koh, a rare oil created by a genus of tree infected with a fungal spore. The piece examines how an intangible object can impress greatly on personal history by relating perfume to memory. Experimenting with the abilities of the Bolex H16 and sound print film stock, this 16mm film was shot and hand-processed at Phil Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat.

  • Travelogue

    This video was taken using a small digital still camera on multiple bus trips between New York City and Upstate NY. The bus’ many large windows afforded dramatic reflections to this perched passenger, feeling as if floating through the landscape. Lulled by the noises of the tires on the road, the incessant tremors, muffled conversations and trying to keep digital camera steady while being thrown from side-to-side, visual wedges kept uncannily intersecting and gesturing.

  • Tourist of memory

    In this journey through time and place – an Ottawa snowstorm, Niagara Falls, and the filmmaker’s childhood home – recollections come unbidden and half-articulated, of trains, marshes and wind turbines, resolving at the inexpressible place where memory lies. A stand-alone chapter of the video essay, “In Between (remembering and forgetting),” “Tourist of memory” was filmed in 16mm, Super 8 and video, with sound design by Edmund Eagan.

  • In Between (remembering and forgetting)

    Composed of nine film and video chapters made between 2004 and 2010, “In Between (remembering and forgetting)” journeys through an abstract landscape marked by half-glimpsed memories and fragments of the past. Using multiple formats and a fluid episodic structure, the work expands beyond the personal to create an enigmatic piece where the viewer’s own experiences and memories resonate. The result is a sustained poetic meditation on family, place and time.

  • Away

    Fragmented memories are recaptured on Super 8 film when Diego visits New York City for the first time, intent upon coming to terms with the love he lost years earlier.

  • Bouquets 11-20

    Comprised of ten one-minute films, shot at ecological sites in Italy, Switzerland and France, “Bouquets 11-20”, continues the work begun with the series “Bouquets 1-10” and “21-30.” Each bouquet of flowers is also a bouquet of film frames, woven together using in-camera techniques. “Bouquets 11-20”, filmed in Italy, Switzerland and France, was delayed by the weather and a series of related technical/aesthetic incidents. The ten little films (1 minute or 1440 frames each, with the exception of 23 frames or nearly a second more for n°16), continue the work begun with the series “Bouquets 1-10” and “21-30.” This consists of…

  • Jardin du soleil (Sun Garden)

    Beginning with natural light, an élément that played a major rôle in cinematographic développement, the subject of the film evolves around solar panels in two different places, Cascina Piola, Asti, in Italy, and Le Vieil Eclis, in Loire Atlantique, Asserac, France. We find ourselves in the middle of sparkling light, exposed to the wind, like the butterflies, the bees and the little clouds. (R.L.)

  • Jardins du Marais (Marsh Gardens)

    These magnificent gardens, in the Parc naturel régional de Brière, in the middle of the presqu’ile de Guérande, Loire-Atlantique, in France, covers over a hectare of land. It’s vegetable garden, ornamental garden, small forest and two ponds, make up a continuously evolving space, but also a visual mumble-jumble of wild life that draws one to delve into it in order to explore it cinematographically. In honor of Annick Bertrand-Gillen and Yves Gillen, the creators of this magnificent space in the middle of nature. (R.L.)

  • Rien d’extraordinaire (Nothing Special)

    Just a glimpse of this beautiful spot around the Hôtel-Pension Beau-Site on the Chemin sur Martigny, Switzerland, in a hamlet surrounded by snow-capped mountains. (R.L.) Music by François Alexis Degrenier (NB: Music starts before picture and ends after picture).

  • Starlings (at Nightfall)

    In Peter Dudar’s hypnotic and vaguely menacing “Starlings (at Nightfall),” we are witness to a strange intersection between the forces of nature and a man-made structure. A single, static, eight-minute-long shot documents the spiraling flight of thousands of starlings around a power transmission tower at dusk. “Suppose we wanted to understand the flocking behaviour of starlings…. What is remarkable about the starlings behaviour is that, despite all appearances, there is no choreographer and, as far as we know, no leader. Each individual bird is just following local rules.” – Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth Steam Whistle Homebrew Award,…