Film Categories: Work by Women

  • notes in origin

    “Shot in northern Alberta, where the artist grew up, the film consists of ten long-take shots of various lengths divided by black leader bearing a number for each successive shot… ‘notes in origin’ realizes the subtle lyricism that appears in the last image of its predecessor. Here Epp intimates a mysteriously shared and personal complicity of artist and viewer without, however, abandoning that purity and extraordinary elegance that mark Epp as one of the most accomplished of film artist.” – Bart Testa, Art Gallery of Ontario catalogue What I like in film is precision, slightness, economy of means, delight, inference…

  • Now That We Are Persons

    Until 1929, Canadian women were told that they couldn’t be senators. Our Constitution, the British North American Act, (BNA) said that only qualified “persons” could be appointed. The government of the day understood that to mean men only. So, in 1927, five Albertan women challenged this definition of “persons” in court. On October 18, 1929, the British Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal in Canada, ruled that the word “persons” could include both men and women. With this new historical interpretation, women won the right to be eligible for the Canadian senate.

  • August Afternoons

    “The film is a manipulation of time, light, and sound. We see time compressed, as light quickly travels around an empty house, and time frozen, as a boy plays on a swing. Natural sounds – a thunderstorm, birds, crickets, and a bell, are identified with a set of images, and then shifted to another set. These intercut elements come to a sense of conclusion, but the film then shifts, and ends quietly, as it began. ‘August Afternoons’ is a film of oppositions, subtly rendered by a very intelligent use of sound/image dialectics. Visually, the film explores very small interior spaces,…

  • Nursing History

    “Nursing History” began as an inquiry into the nature of woman’s work, specifically the relationship between woman’s work as wives and mothers, and woman’s work as nurses. Having worked as a nurse for ten years, I decided to locate this inquiry historically, within my own past as represented in the home movies that, for the most part, my father had made and that stand as a record of our family’s collective history. From 1968-1984, 60 minutes worth of history, on Super 8 film, were recorded. Out of this footage there were forty minutes of weddings and in each case it…

  • October 25th + 26th, 1996

    During the Metro Days of Action, a 150’ long building was inflated using the air vents in front of Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. The October Group action references both public institution and temporary home to protest the erosion of our city. Music by Dirty Three.

  • On Her Baldness

    “On Her Baldness” is a documentary about women who have lost their hair due to illness or who have shaved their heads by choice. Focusing on women whose baldness has forced them to confront issues of appearance, self-image and sexuality, this film challenges viewers to question and confront their own prejudices regarding the true nature of beauty and femininity.

  • One Woman Waiting

    “One Woman Waiting” evokes questions of subjectivity in the mirrored performance of two women. The single take, tableau composition forms the structure for catalytic change between the characters. The sensuous desert environment accentuates the poetic and ephemeral quality of this film. “Massarella uses the fixed camera shot in her enigmatic film of a symbolic encounter between two women in a beautifully shot desert location. Its cryptic form is a good example of how an idea can be treated most effectively by simple means, for instance in the use of the frame as a point of entry and exit for characters…

  • Oops!

    “Oops!” is about the waste product of our impressive creations; what goes around comes around. “Oops!” uses drawn animation (markers, watercolours, pastels, inks), painting on glass, photocopy montage, cut-out animation, claymation, and pixillation.

  • Optic Nerve

    Of this film Hammer says, “It is about the fragility of both film and life as the sterility of a nursing home is memorized with veils and faded patterns of the past by the filmmaker imagining what her grandmother is seeing.” The film won first prize in several film festivals, was chosen for the 1987 Whitney Museum of Art Biennial and was premiered at the London International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1988.

  • Opus 40

    “Opus 40” is about repetition: repetition in working and living, repetition through multiplicity and series, repetition to form pattern and rhythm, repetition in order and in revealing. “Opus 40” was filmed in the Enterprise Foundry, Sackville, New Brunswick, and has excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s writings.