Film Categories: Portraits

  • 50/fifty

    “50/fifty“ uses old home movies and hand-processed film to pay homage to the memory of the filmmaker’s father, who passed away when she was young.

  • Dear Guy

    “Dear Guy” dramatizes an inward and sometime romantically sentimental meditation on the relevance, remembrance and acculturation of Guy Debord’s life and works. The layered histrionics of the film engender reconsiderations of identification, moral responsibility, nostalgia and the potential of art in contemporary society. Excerpts from Debord’s memoir and fictional epistolary monologues are combined with an eclectic assortment of appropriated materials, invented leitmotifs, lecture performances, hybrid forms of the essay film, documentary and edutainment formats. “Dear Guy” drifts through a labyrinth-like montage structure that frustrates passive viewing while inviting contemplation. “DEAR GUY is an energetic response and thoughtful companion piece to…

  • Dance with Me

    The impressionist, lyrical style of the film is a departure for Nicolaou, who describes this film as “one half documentary and one half fictional narrative.” The film is a collage visually and thematically, though the narration serves to anchor the piece with a freestyle kind of story telling. Nicolaou drew upon experiences in her own life when creating the film. She incorporates footage from her family’s home movies of the 60s and 70s. “A haunting portrayal of the yearning for intimacy between parent and child.” – Henry Mietkiewicz, Toronto Star Life always appears to be more joyous in old home…

  • Still Light

    A pregnant moment from Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” triggers this haunting exploration of lineage, memory, and loss. Using a combination of 16mm and Super 8 film, “Still Light” journeys through a forest of old photographs, shadowed by the ethereal voice of Kim Novak.

  • Dandelions

    “Lyrical and full of mirth, this filmmaker wonders out loud in her first film: ‘How do I make myself at home in a landscape made foreign to me?’ Wilkinson looks at her self – black – and ponders in the white landscape called Canada how can she ‘enjoy the flowers’ as she cartwheels with great panache through fields of them. What kind of relationship to the land can she have in a place where she sees herself but where others constantly ask: Where are you from? Wilkinson’s existence vis a vis the land seems to lie somewhere in between the…

  • King of the Jews

    “King of the Jews” is a film about fear and transcendence. Utilizing Hollywood movies, 1950s educational films, personal home movies and religious films spanning the history of cinema, the filmmaker depicts his childhood fear of Jesus Christ. These childhood recollections are a point of departure for larger issues, including the roots of Christian anti-Semitism and the need for forgiveness and healing.

  • Folk Songs

    “This lyrical and impressionistic rumination on the filmmaker’s Bulgarian heritage explores the impact of family and tradition, the links between the old world and the new, and the simple, lovely gestures that unite generations.” – Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto In 1913, Sophia and Dimitry Makedonsky were teenagers when they left the Ukraine for the United States. Growing up in the Midwest, filmmaker LeAnn Erickson often heard stories of the “old country” her grandparents had left behind. As Erickson travels to Russia, the search for her sense of “place” sparks a re-examination of her family’s immigrant past. Her…

  • NYC Dilemma

    In 2002-2003, San Francisco composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky moved to a fifth-floor walk-up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This semi-verité musical video by Todd Wilson (Under One Roof), shot entirely in one day, documents the great dilemmas of NYC life. Go to the survival job, or attend a business meeting with a potential client (portrayed by real-life client and director Elizabeth Elson [Born in a Barn])? Eat lunch or scavange? How hot is it outside? How to afford a gym? And, the greatest mystery of all, if this is an “E train running on the F line,” is it an…

  • Echo

    “Echo” recalls childhood and the native home of the filmmaker through image, song and text. This self-portrait hints at the fragments, the pieces, the painful and repressed shards that the self contains, and through which it strives to piece together and illuminate its mysterious gaps. “‘Echo’ by Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof boldly explores homesickness and cultural yearning through visual imagery, song and text. In this atypical self-portrait, the artist has created a photogram of her body that acts as a travelling matte through the countryside of her native land as she mouths an old Polish immigrant’s song; the original recording pierces like…

  • Tranzploitation

    “Tranzploitation” is a trans-comedy. A trannedy! Or perhaps just a hot tranny mess. The story follows Kaleb as he fights discrimination (the anti-trans fats police), exploits his new trans-man identity (hello cheaper haircuts!) and makes the personal decision to get the surgery he needs (Botox, of course). Don’t miss the cameo by Amy Ray of Indigo Girls fame!