Film Categories: Sound Art + Music
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ANCESTRIES
An anagram of “resistance,” ANCESTRIES is a layered piece that encodes the dialectics of colonialism, de-sexualization, desire and resistance. An Asian is seduced by, and in turn, seduces a Caucasian whilst simultaneously reframing and performing two arias from Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns. ANCESTRIES suggests possibilities for resistance vs. outright rejection by having the Asian turn the colonized culture against itself. At the same time, it brackets the Western de-sexualization and feminization of Asian males (and high voices), while simultaneously exemplifying and subverting the stereotypes of submission. The use of male bodies also calls out the worship of hard,…
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DELILAH JUKEBOX
DELILAH JUKEBOX (aka DJ) toys with the notion of loops, repetition, and dichotomy like the A-B sides of a vinyl record. Delilah is not just a woman, she is the embodiment and projection of fear and fantasy; her name conjures diverse images and prejudices of the lover, the traitor, the fallen woman, the temptress, the patriot, and the vengeful, etc. Through a series of repetitions of Delilah’s aria “Printemps qui commence” (from the opera Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns) in a series of domestic spaces, male mezzo Stephen Chen explores the representation of the feminine by deconstructing and re-imagining…
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Up In A Plane
Following the life of war hero Kenneth Owen Moore, Up in a Plane transforms a granddaughter’s grief into a joyfully animated adventure through the Canadian prairies of the early 1900s, the Second World War, the present and beyond.
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Fairyland
A whimsical journey into a land of beauty and nonsense.
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Aileron
A take on the myths of Sisyphus and Ophiuchus. The filmmaker imparts the ending of a motion to a rolling ball and likening it to that of psychosis that can be described as a giant rolling boulder. This “boulder” is symbolized by a medicine ball in the film.
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Arrested Decay
A film based on a novella of the same name by the filmmaker. A video poem where nations of dilapidated buildings is the focus and the richest peaceful nation lives in substandard housing and has an inadequate food supply.
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Dear Tree
A video poem about clear-cutting forestry and its effects on the air we breathe. The film draws parallels between present day and the renaissance.
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Desert Road
Sage hangs from a rear-view mirror to impart wisdom while a prayer for peace meets mysticism. All things that are left wild are better left untouched by the fingerprint of Man as he travels to a burning oasis in the desert only to find his vision cleansed as he looks further.
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Drawing A Blank
A psychedelic B&E leaves a sketchbook open and results in a lot of questions. A paradoxical sacrifice is made when one is committed to the page. Does one make high art, for the main stream or low brow art?
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Euphemism
The death of the Id and the Ego of a hit man as he embraces nature. Inspired by Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and applied into an imaginary world of a man with a gun and a pact with his tribe.
