Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Selections

    Sam, a young black man, is trapped inside a wooden cube, and is faced with the challenge of finding a way out. He reflects upon two projected memories from his past, and explores a mysterious bar code that appears on the cube wall. He finds himself struggling against a system of machines whose only goal is to manufacture racial profiles.

  • Something Else

    Fun things happen when you play with yourself. Change is one of them.

  • Zombie Business

    Zombie business is unleashed as the “invisible hand” of voodoo economics produces disposible people. Shot in Super 8, the film evokes the silent era, while also mixing B-movie horror, experimental cinema and political satire.

  • Napoleon’s History of the World

    Napoleon loves a good tyrant. He might get the details wrong and misrepresent history, but he always tells a good story. In this episode, George Bush stages a successful attack on the Inuits. This finger puppet show comes from the puppet shop of Jamie Shannon and the hands and fingers of many good people. Selected screenings: Canadian Film Centre Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005; Rehab Parkdale Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005

  • Chulas Fronteras

    “Chulas Fronteras” is a magnificent introduction to the most exciting Nortena musicians working today: Los Alegres de Teran, Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jimenez and others. Theirs is the music of the Northern Texas-Mexico border. It reflects the spirit of the people in their strong family life and sheer enjoyment of domestic rituals- preparing food and eating, celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary, gathering in the backyard with friends. Blank does not overlook the hardships of the Chicano migrating from state to state for seasonal work in the fields. He makes clear the role that music has in redeeming their lives by giving…

  • Cigarette Blues

    “Cigarette Blues” is a little film with a big message – that smoking cigarettes causes cancer and cancer will kill you. The pain and sorrow of this fact is demonstrated through the work of two very different artists. A sculpture, composed entirely of cigarerette butts smoked by prominent West Coast artist Louis Bunce, completed shortly before his death of lung cancer, opens the film. Oakland Blues singer Sonny Rhodes follows, singing the title song, a mournful tale of his lover whose refusal to stop smoking led to her death. “‘Cigarette Blues’ is a beaut!… you take people right up to…

  • Green

    “My first foray into collage animation uses low-fi techniques, such as a photocopier, to illustrate a story in limerick form. The limericks tell of a place where creativity is suppressed and all acts of resistance are covered over with white paint. It also illustrates a character who displays an open sexuality, both queer and polyamorous. The DIY aesthetic calls up notions of subversion of the dominant culture through its ues of low-tech and hand-made traces.” – Juliana Saragosa Selected screenings: Splice This! Super 8 Film Festival, Toronto, 2004

  • Hate

    Using his own lumpy body as a template, artist RM Vaughan explores differing reactions by various audiences to the blunt reality of having a non-commodifiable body in the age of supermodels. Alternately scathing and self-deprecating, “Hate” dishes out (and takes) some unhappy truths about “beauty” and art.

  • Cityscape

    “Cityscape” is an impressionistic documentary film intended to create a social awareness of the need to design safer cities and urban environments for women.

  • Profile

    “Profile” takes place during a short cab ride through New York City and the subconscious of the passenger. The short conversation between cabbie and passenger is at once mundane, evocative, and unnerving.