Film Categories: Portraits

  • Jew and the Irishman, The

    “‘Can’t you take a joke?’ They asked us that for years. The young artist’s role as witness, cataloguing the abject misery of his betters – then later, communing with mother moon and father darkness. Suburban car wrecks and the long walk home. ‘A friend recently suggested that the key biographical moment captured in this piece (witnessing my father’s temporary sense of freedom after transgressing the social contract of white, middle class, 1970’s, British Columbia) may have been when I decided to become an artist.” Music by Christine Fellows.

  • Saigon Apartments

    “The artist watching the weak doing the poor. The film-maker’s eye as voyeur’s lens. The camera as gun. If violence is the new sex, then TV news is the new pornography. Romance language yoked to the class struggle. Bulls eye. “This one’s about one-way interfaces in reference to class and power dynamics. It’s common in our culture for artists to live in low rent neighbourhoods, and therefore to witness the daily misery of the poor, which often informs their art. But this witnessing is generally done from an outsider’s perspective. At times this complex of watching, hearing, and recording can…

  • Bus North to Thompson With Les at the Wheel

    “Les Brandt drives for Grey Goose Coach Lines due north from Winnipeg to Thompson, Manitoba, as well as on long distance charters all over North America. He was recently awarded the ‘Million Safe Miles Award’, as well as ‘Driver of the Year’. “I drove highway bus myself for many years – it was an exceptionally good seasonal artist’s job, that I still miss. When speaking with Les, I’m reminded in particular of the summer of ’87, when I drove a route from northern British Columbia to the Yukon. Over the years I’ve come to admire people, like Les, who do…

  • Condo

    “Buildings modeled on mausoleums, filled with retirees. What can we make of this? The word ‘condo’ has become charged with meaning in our culture. “The question of where to live has recently reached a fever pitch for many people in the richer Western industrialized nations. People are moving with greater and greater frequency, as if desperate to find the perfect ‘resting place’. At the end of the road is a gilded question mark. Is this what we worked so hard for?” Music by Jason Tait.

  • Neighbours Walk Softly

    “‘Neighbours Walk Softly’ is an anti-war protest poem, a test of the idea of neighbourhood, and a highlighting of the dividing lines we’re only too willing to fight to defend in the inevitable times of crisis. “This Super 8 and video footage was collected in an upscale Vancouver neighbourhood over the period of one year. The act of looking through a lens caused me to realize what wasn’t there to be seen – even though there weren’t any physical walls to keep out the poor and the less beautiful, somehow they were missing from the footage I collected. “The familiar…

  • Unbreakable Bones

    A celebration of my love for my parents and of their bravery in the face of death. Footage shot from the windows of planes high above the Rocky Mountains, on trips between Winnipeg and the West Coast to visit my parents: broad metal wings equaling the heights of material invention, the dream-like hush of air travel, human endeavour sailing through blue ether. Music by Jason Tait.

  • Stars

    A rediscovered roll of super 8 film inspires the filmmaker to ponder friends that get lost with the passing of time. This bittersweet ode to friendship considers how someone can know all your secrets one year and somehow disappear from your life the next.

  • L’éclat du mal / The Bleeding Heart of It

    The house that bursts; the scene of the crime; the nucleus. A universe collapses on itself: all hell breaks loose. “In my dream there’s a war going on. It’s Christmas time. I’m running and I’m carrying myself as a child. It’s dark in the tunnel and I’m heading towards the light, the daylight.” – Louise Bourque, from the film’s voice-over narration Selected Screenings & Awards: Editing Award, Cinematexas, Austin, TX, 2005; Director’s Citation, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Jersey City, NJ, 2006; Opening Night film, Media City Festival, Windsor, ON, 2006; Whitney Biennial, New York, NY, 2006; Sundance Film…

  • Pursuit of Happyness, The

    This film explores the work and travels of John and Frank Navin, two gay brothers from Chicago, who create modern easy-listening music under the moniker The Aluminum Group. The film documents a music tour of Northern Italy where their musical past and future meet. With Cynthia Plaster Caster.

  • Changing Evan

    Is my daughter Evan like a puzzle? Just when I think everything is going well, either a germ will attack or a new emotion will surface. I hear that children change every week. When I was making this film, my daughter was invaded by the chicken pox virus. I was convinced that I must finish this film as quickly as possible because her health was directly linked to its completion. Honourable mention by the Canadian Film Centre at the 2006 Ottawa International Animation Festival.