Film Categories: Sound Art + Music

  • Rats and Welfare

    Set to a potent activist song by Zoe Chilco, “Rats and Welfare” takes aim at corporate greed and the rats in power.

  • All the Great Operas (in 10 Minutes)

    Using Monty-Pythonesque animation, this film serves up the stripped-down essence of the most famous operas in a quick and painless manner, and reveals once and for all that opera has more in common with soap opera and pulp fiction than anyone likes to admit.

  • Letters

    “Letters” explores the transformation of painting through photography and the movement of light as music, text and body language. Formed through a combination of abstract hand-painted film and live photography, originated on super 8mm and 16mm, ‘Letters’ uses extensive optical printing and single-frame editing techniques to draw the material and structural properties of film into focus and create a sense of rhythm, gravity, weight and mass.

  • Open

    An abstract film of vertical horror, absence and descent (After Marcel Duchamp’s painting, ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’, 1912) composed in-camera by optically manipulating an individual frame of hand-painted film. With electronic music track by David McKenzie. The film frame was painted in a single stroke to imitate the blurring of images produced by the opening and closing of the eyelid; and by film slippage (a common fault, where damaged film runs through the camera or projector gate without stopping). Subtle movements of reflected light on the film surface and parallax camera motion animate the painting; which, in tandem with the…

  • Walk

    A dance video exploring body movement as visual music and conduction. Made in collaboration with the Scottish dancer Vanessa Smith Influenced by the music of John Cage and Butch Morris and the choreography of Rudolf Laban.

  • Snip

    Shards of film fly off the screen while the music of Fats Waller plays on! In this short abstract film, coloured ink and small pieces of film stock are heaped directly on the film’s surface. “This film was made in the weeks preceding the birth of my first child. It was my intention to create a fast-moving, colourful style that a very young child could respond to. I’ll see in the years that follow if I was right or not,” Steven Woloshen.

  • 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…

  • Behind the Music: Destiny’s Neighbour

    A behind-the-scenes look into the smash sensation “Destiny’s Neighbour” – the dancing, the dreams and the donuts. “There just aren’t any sexy fat boys in girl drag on T.V.” – Behynde “Destiny’s Child is just a slimmed down version of us. They ripped off our moves, they ripped off our songs.” – Mass-Assey “We had to kick her out because she was eating all the donuts.” – K-Kremey

  • Curse of the Voodoo Child, The

    Sex, birth, fire and fingerprints. A passion play and the events of conception that result in mayhem. A rock’n’roll theme, in Cinemascope! Nominated for Best Animation at the 2006 Jutra Awards.