Film Categories: Work by Women

  • Where Does Mess Come From?

    “A hybrid of narrative and performance, film and video that uses a baroque train trip to suggest the eruption of chaos behind every stray desire. Loose enigma gets its due here, but it is when the tape is plainest – as in a sequence where a woman reveals fantasies of men that approach ‘Cosmo’ dimensions – that things get most fascinating.” – Cameron Bailey, NOW “Where Does Mess Come From?” is a story of chaos in its most pedestrian form. The constant breakdown of order in the universe is also the constant breakdown of order in our lives. The need…

  • X

    A profound and powerful experimental, personal film of one woman’s despair, rage and exhibitionism; a baroque fugue of identity chanting growing from women’s pain to a holistic, self-healing naming ritual.

  • Yearbook

    The length of a pop song, because it’s about the insidious way pop music begins to describe the moments of four lives. Romping through high school in four kilts and kisses, these girls truncate a feature film into the length of a pop song. Starring Janine Fung, Louise Liliefeldt, Nicole Pena and Christina Zeidler.

  • You Take Care Now

    “Fleming’s perilous travelogue recites, in first person voice-over, a tale of two cities. The first is Bridiski, where the patent sexism of her surround leads her to seek refuge in the hotel room of her unscrupulous tour guide. The second moves closer to home – where the simplest of street crossings becomes a nightmare journey of dark collisions, broken bones and ambulance drives.” – Mike Hoolboom

  • Mother Daughter Love

    A mother and her look-alike young daughter have died and are wandering their home-town looking for a way to come back to life. A young man who doesn’t realize they are dead agrees to show them around town. As the tour progresses, he remembers and notices progressively strange things about them, and becomes caught between his desire to help and his fear. Little does he know, they face a time limit, as do we all. This is a creepy yet beautiful tale of regeneration and rebirth.

  • Swell

    Desire disorients and bodily swellings result. “A lovely concoction of hand-tinted and scratched film evoking a woman’s flight from concrete to nature – spurred on by a kiss.” – Gordon Bowness, Xtra!

  • Fires of Joanna, The

    Set against the bleak landscape of Depression-era Eastern Ontario, this film tells the story of Joanna McVeigh and her struggle to endure a harsh and unforgiving life. Epileptic since childhood and past the age of marriage, Joanna lives alone on a run-down farm with Frank, her alcoholic father. Bound by a promise to her dying mother and haunted by a dark and shameful childhood secret, Joanna illuminates her loneliness with secret imaginings and the pleasure of her one great gift, the ability to set fires with her mind. Joanna’s desire to break free from the confines of her lonely existence…

  • MURDER and murder

    Mildred is a professor who has lived as a lesbian for as long as she can remember. Doris, a mother of grown children, is taking classes and is falling in love with a woman for the first time. From different backgrounds and circumstances, Mildred and Doris try to carve out a life together. The film investigates the pleasures, uncertainties and ambiguities of late-life emotional attachment and lesbian identity within the confines of a culture that glorifies youth and heterosexual romance. The story is haunted by the ghosts of Doris’ mother Jenny and an 18-year-old Mildred. Running parallel is a commentary…

  • Lisa Lisa

    Have you ever dated a woman named Lisa? Is it possible that more dykes are named Lisa than any other name? Find out what 22 women in Chicago had to say about it.

  • Lesbian Tapes (After Ilene Segalove), The

    A dyke whines about her boredom with vanilla sex and her lover offers suggestions to solve the problem. “The Lesbian Tapes (After Ilene Segalove)” is a remake of an early 1974 black-and-white video called “The Mom Tapes” by Ms. Segalove, in which Ilene is whining to her mother about her boredom. Her mother offers suggestions of things Ilene might do instead.