Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • James MacSwain Retrospective, A

    “Atlantic native James MacSwain has made more than 20 films over the last 30 years. His voice has become a pervasive and sophisticated contribution to the experimental film community in this country, often literally as his extensive use of voiceover – and his clever scripts – evince a considerable talent as a writer. MacSwain’s particular use of 16mm collage and animation appear deceptively simple, but his films have a lingering depth and poignancy that resists easy categorization.” – Images Festival, 2011 DVD Compilation Contains: 1. Little Known Curious Facts (1981, 4.20 min.) 2. Flower (1984, 8.20 min.) 3. Amherst (1984,…

  • Ransom Notes

    The filmmaker’s response to her experience of the hijacking of her city during the Toronto G20 Summit, “Ransom Notes” re-appropriates language and meaning through the act of collage. The film combines new and old media (film, newsprint, print-outs of twitter feeds) to explore social mobilization through mass media. The soundtrack of the film was created by placing letters, words and sentences directly on the optical soundtrack. “We have your …” “The ransom note, in our collective imagination, is an interesting entry point to the politics of ownership, freedom and exchange value, made by transforming mass media (newspapers) content into a…

  • Cropping of the Spectacle, The

    “The Cropping of the Spectacle” began as a live cinema performance investigating the birth of the Television Spectacle in 1954 McCarthy’s America. Based loosely on the classic anarchist documentary “Point of Order” (Emile de Antonio/Dan Talbot, 1964); a film which at once deconstructed the hearings and re-invented documentary strategies – “The Cropping of the Spectacle” integrates archival movie and audio clips in chronicling the strange temporal evolution of our understandings of recent history. The original film and its many revisions ultimately reveal an odd continuation of a hegemonic framing process begun with the original Army-McCarthy hearings, which continues to the…

  • Bol (Speak!)

    A cyclist meets a stranger in the market. A boy waits for his mother to return home. A man wakes up to find that his face is being stolen by shadows. Three separate encounters become the departure point for “Bol (Speak!),” a short dramatic experimental triptych on the nature of violence. Inspired by the Pakistani Marxist poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem Bol, and drawn from real events, the film uses still photographs, puppets and folk dance to comment on the increasing ubiquity and tenor of violence in South Asia. It is a gradually escalating experience of violence. All three chapters…

  • Sex On Wheels (demi-feature)

    “Sex On Wheels” tells the secret history of San Francisco’s sex workers. Interweaving Super 8 footage of a living history bike tour/theater piece (think Colonial Williamsburg, with whores) with archival film and photographs, the film tells the story of a city’s forgotten residents: an ex-slave who became a wealthy procuress, a cross-dressing 1940s lesbian gigolo, a madam who became mayor, a gang of transgender teen hustlers who rioted for their rights, a radical feminist hooker/assassin, and a posse of anarchist strippers who took over a peep-show. 12-minute version also available, see “Sex on Wheels (short)”

  • Death of My Daughter

    “The idea for the project came from my mother, who, upon learning of my transition, announced to my family that I was dead to her, that her daughter was gone. In fact, that daughter of her creation had never existed. In a meta-sense, “Death of My Daughter” is about the role of gender, and gender roles, in contemporary U.S. society. This video represents the burial, or putting to rest, of the gender roles our parents/society have imposed upon us and illustrates our metamorphoses into the men we have become.” – Leon Mostovoy

  • Arrival, The

    In this satirical short, a close-knit community is rattled by an invasion of the queerest kind. Eyewitness accounts reveal the terror that has befallen the members of an Asian-American church, leaving them fragile and shaken. “The Arrival” is a hilarious take on LGBT issues that cleverly mixes fact and fiction.

  • Abstract Random: Mi Nah Wanna

    “me nah wanna hear dem chat bout violence, if you can’t take care of the children, it’s time to raise a generation, YO, the whole world is listening…” ABSTRACT RANDOM: rap electro dub hop + bring-back-cool feminist political. An all-female Toronto-based group composed of Jamilah Malika (vocals), LoverSun aka F.Nocera (producer, vocals, visuals) and Ayo Leilani (vocals). AR’s new music video for the rhythmic “Mi Nah Wanna.”

  • Genderbusters

    In their fight for the Gender Evolution Revolution, the Genderbusters drive around resolving the gender-binary dilemmas of folks all over San Francisco. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Short Film at Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festival 2011.

  • Bliss Out

    A light-drenched black and white roadmovie, charting interior and exterior peregrinations made through the City of Angels in 2003/04. (Antimatter Film Festival catalogue, 2009)