Film Categories: Memory

  • The Story of the Dancing Heart

    A poetic, flowing Heart dances with ease day and night. A busy, curious Mind sets off on a journey to learn to dance as rhythmically and as elegantly as Heart. But the more desperate he becomes, the harder it gets. Maybe Mind will never encapsulate Heart’s lightness and innate delight. Or maybe music will show Mind the ways of the Heart.

  • 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.

  • Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey

    An immersive cinematic poem of a seven year journey of return, Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey weaves together stories of near-death and mystical experience in Andalucia. When I was 19 I set out, hoping I could learn the meaning of life by “experiencing everything.” I bought a car for 20 marks in a cafe in Ulm. I spray painted it yellow and green and drove it from Holland to Romania to Spain, sleeping in the back seat in a red blanket. Driving down to Malaga, at the crest of the mountains, the brakes went out. As the car sped…

  • ARIES

    A single window frame; a portal. As the circular nature of time begins to reveal itself, a new decade begins.

  • Panoramic Sleights

    While trapped indoors, household screens become windows to the outside world.

  • THINK BEFORE YOU THINK: A PORTRAIT OF RICK RAXLEN

    Think Before You Think is a portrait of film poet, animator and artist Rick Raxlen. Shot on 16mm film and digital video at his Victoria, BC home and studio over the course of a year, the film follows Raxlen’s daily practice, uncovering the rituals and gestures of a creative process. Mining the highly specific and personal nature of this life-sized project, excerpts from Raxlen’s films, drawings, paintings and mark-making from a 50+ year art practice combine with hand-processed and manipulated film materials to play off the rites and relaxed rigour of his unique approach to making a life. “Perfectly captures…

  • Vienna

    A meditation on timeless landscapes and the transience of vision.

  • GIRLBAND

    Life on the road. It’s not easy. 50 hours of cub tour footage (1994 & 1996) boiled down to this. Thanks to Canada Council for the Arts, Vtape, Trinity Square Video and FAG for support.

  • 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.

  • 86 SE Marine

    A chunk of Vancouver Real Estate as it sits, stuck in the no-zone. —– In 2016, Iris Film Collective presented the first Vancouver Edition of One Take Super 8. 26 artists (IFC members and invited artists) were given one role of either Black and White Kodak Tri-X 200D or Colour Reversal Agfa 200D cartridges. All editing was done “in camera” as it was shot, and the film presented just as it was filmed. No peeking before the night of the screening, it’s straight from the Lab to the Screen. Artists chose to play their film silent or provide sound for…