Film Format: 16mm

  • Mashiko Village Pottery, Japan 1937

    Produced by a pre-war cultural organization in Japan, the film is a work of great clarity and beauty which follows an entire pottery-making cycle as performed in Japan for centuries. Mashiko ceramic manufacture is said to date back to 1853. Also shown at work is the great painter of teapots, Masu Minagawa, an itinerant, illiterate painter of patterns who travelled amongst the kilns in villages. It is said that she decorated up to one thousand teapots per day. Some of her very rare drawings on paper are now held at the Fogg Art Museum in Massachusetts. The film was restored…

  • Matilda

    “Matilda” is an impressionistic portrait of a woman confined to a wheelchair. Through a series of five vignettes, the history of her life unfolds enhanced by a blend of experimental and documentary elements. In the last vignette, entitled ” Matilda’s Interview,” we leave the film with an understanding of her personal survival. Produced with assistance from the Ontario Arts Council.

  • Matinee, The

    A docudrama showing that bingo is more than monetary fantasy.

  • Matter of Expectations, A

    “A Matter of Expectations” depicts the life circumstances of women living in the Runnymede Hospital, a chronic care facility in Toronto. Longer life spans, low incomes, and a lack of housing alternatives force many women to be dependent on the health care system. This film surveys the problems confronting older women through interviews in which women discuss their feelings about aging, institutional life, the care they receive, and dying. Footage of life in the hospital with accompanying voice-overs presents a balanced view of the problematic position of older women in the 1980s.

  • Mayhem

    “Mayhem” gives homage to Film Noir, soap opera thrillers and Mexican comic books, which generate the action. Perversely and equally inspired by de Sade’s “Justine” and Vertov’s sentences about the satiric detective advertisement, “Mayhem” looks at sexuality and violence in the movies. “Mayhem” links the screen, the bedroom, and the streets to generate a mosaic of the way modern culture sends mixed signals about sexuality to men and women. “‘Mayhem’ is more than a detective story; it’s a hypermodern melding of forms, an erotic send-up of slapstick with a heady dose of cultural nay-saying.” – Elizabeth Pincus, Gay Community News…

  • Me, Mom and Mona

    The women of the Shum family are a force to be reckoned with. Sitting around joking about how they pull the wool over Dad’s eyes, or remembering all the absurdities of growing up Chinese in Vancouver, it’s clear they’ve hit on a strategy that can handle both Chinese tradition and Canadian custom – humour. The laughter resonates throughout “Me, Mom and Mona” to touch off much deeper responses.

  • Memento

    Memento’s chameleon narrative timeshifts between the nostalgic nightmares of Rebecca (Marg Hitcick), John’s (Mark Ruzylo) invasive investigations, and Richard’s (Scott Withers) idiosyncratic meditations about John and his film. Rebecca, troubled by an uncertain past and her obsessive filmmaking father, holds a yard sale to rid herself of his memory forever. John, a disgruntled filmmaker who works in a run-down film processing lab, tries to make his first feature by cutting together old footage he finds at yard sales. When he finds some disturbing reels in Rebecca’s garbage, he questions her and has the door slammed in his face.

  • Menses

    A wry comedy on the disagreeable aspects of menstruation. Women act out their own dramas on a California hillside, in a supermarket, in a red-filtered ritual of mutual bonding. “Menses” combines both the imagery and the politics of menstruation in a fine blend of comedy and drama.

  • Mercy

    “Voyeurism, eroticism, violence and pornography are challengingly jumbled together: the result is a mixture of fluttery pictures which cloud what is real and what is not, making the questions that these films provoke all the more disturbing.” – Jane Headon, City Limits “‘Mercy’ shows no mercy as it dissects the games mass media play with our perceptions. It blends found footage, images and sounds into a flow that’s as revealing as it is overwhelming.” – New York Festival Catalogue

  • Arnold

    This is a comedy about a boy who sweeps floors in a Chi-Com drug store and who one day meets a girl. What happens after that is humorously absurd.