Film Categories: Portraits

  • Mechanical Memory

    Created from super 8 footage that was shot in the 1970s of the family dogs and the trains that my father worked on, this film explores the decay of memory and image. The super 8 film grew fungus while stored in a basement. It was then optically printed up to 16mm and slowed down so that the snowflake shaped fungus could be studied. Narration presents fragmented stories of childhood memories. This film was created as a source film, which was later physically cut up and reprinted with a flashlight to destroy the image and sound for the subsequent film “Mechanical/Animal…

  • Knowledge of Good and Evil

    “Knowledge of Good and Evil” is an abstract exploration of the tension surrounding women and stereotypical representations of their knowledge. This film was created from footage shot at Phil Hoffman’s independent imaging retreat (aka “the film farm”) in Ontario as well as from footage shot in Vancouver (where I had given myself the challenge of shooting 100 feet of film every month). All of the footage was hand-processed, and some of it was contact printed by hand and treated in baths of potassium ferricyanide. The final film was created through various optical printing techniques.

  • 16mm Postcard

    A diaristic film in which the filmmaker comes to terms with her new life in Vancouver, “16mm Postcard” is a bittersweet letter back home to the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative in Halifax. Like in any letter, it becomes painfully obvious that one can never fully communicate, and the result is a series of random tidbits that point to a larger experience.

  • Playing Jacob

    Loosely exploring the historical weight of institutionalized religion in a postmillennial society, and its relationship to individual spirituality, the filmmaker places herself into the Jacob myth on the Pentateuch. She plays the role of Jacob in an attempt to come to terms with her religious upbringing, and her anxious ambivalence towards her own agnosticism. Inspired by the in-camera techniques of the early cinema of Meliese, the film and all of its special effects were shot and edited entirely in-camera in one take.

  • Forever Hold Your Peace

    Live actions with hand scratched sound, this film presents the frustration of feeling the need to speak with nothing to say. Filmed by the artist’s husband at the time, the film also relates to subtle complexities of communication within marriage.

  • Destroying Angel

    “Destroying Angel” is an experimental documentary that relates two stories of illness, and weaves them into a filmic tapestry of family history, memory and loss. The narrator, confronted with his own mortality, guides us through a landscape of recollections, dreams, close friendships and family ties. Narratives about present-day events interplay with lyrical reminiscences of the past. Eventually, just as the past always informs the present, the two styles of narrative begin to merge. In the end, we are left with a moving portrait of the struggles involved in dealing with AIDS, cancer, memory and intimate relationships. “What was clear from…

  • Man Who Built My Childhood, The (The Epic Story of My Life Appendix B)

    Brian Stockton’s series of humourous autobiographical shorts takes a detour into architecture with this 5-minute “appendix” about renowned Saskatchewan architect Joseph Pettick. Pettick has designed a staggering 500 buildings in Saskatchewan, and his impact on the province and the filmmaker is enormous. “I have lived my life in Joseph Pettick’s buildings” states the narration. Stockton explores three of Pettick’s masterpieces including Grant Road Elementary School which had a huge impact on the filmmaker’s early life and has figured prominently in Stockton’s EPIC STORY OF MY LIFE series.

  • Whitmore Park (The Epic Story of My Life Part 4)

    Brian Stockton’s series of humourous autobiographical short films goes beyond his acclaimed SASKATCHEWAN TRILOGY and into the suburban neighbourhood of Whitmore Park. Filled with ruminations about ‘the future’, strange performance art projects from grade four, and the beginnings of a life as a filmmaker, “Whitmore Park” transcends the neighbourhood and revels in the ‘epic’ story of a life in the suburbs. Like others in the series, the film is a unique mix of documentary, drama and animation, all presented in the visual feast of 35mm Cinemascope.

  • Saskatchewan Part 3

    Brian Stockton’s series of eccentric autobiographical short films continues with “Saskatchewan Part 3,” the conclusion of THE SASKATCHEWAN TRILOGY. Part 3 takes a humourous, animated look at the filmmaker’s family tree, and how it is that his grandparents ended up in Saskatchewan in the early 20th century. As with the previous installments, “Saskatchewan Part 3” is a melange of personal history. family mementos, and Saskatchewan lore, mixed tobether with a bone-dry sense of humour. Filmed in glorious 35mm cinemascope, “Saskatchewan Part 3” seeks to define what it means to come home.

  • Deviate

    “Deviate” is a short Super 8 film made specifically for the Memorial Project. While friends of Dan Moyen, who died of AIDS in 1990, talk about him, the viewer sees old footage of Dan expressing his feelings on the matter.