Film Format: 16mm

  • Crack, Brutal Grief

    “Powerful and raw, CRACK, BRUTAL GRIEF is an impressive extension of R. Bruce Elder’s obsessions with history, media culture, psychology, technology, and the cruelty found in nature. The film acts as a primal scream, literally and metaphorically. The point of departure for the film came shortly after the gruesome suicide of Elder’s close friend. Elder began an investigative examination of graphic images of suicides, scenes of horror, and hard-core pornography found on the internet, which ultimately form the thesis of this cathartic expression of grief. ‘Increasingly angered by the Web’s banalization of suffering, I decided to fashion a compilation film,…

  • Urge

    A young woman has to pee. Due to various circumstances and her own inability to admit it, she holds it in. When the need becomes too unbearable, she takes matters into her own hands – with unexpected results.

  • Brick, The

    A docu-drama on the sterility of suburban high school life and an example of one young man’s attempt to escape. From a brief intense excursion into drugs, music and parties, to a rational attempt at change through participation in a school paper, “The Brick,” Michael’s alienation is symbolized in a recurring nightmare of frustration and anger where he hurls a brick into a black void. Eventually he comes to terms with his loneliness and blindness through photography, and accepts his entry into the adult world.

  • Day Jesus Melted, The

    “The Day Jesus Melted” is a playfully poignant story of a child’s confrontation with the mysterious world of faith.

  • Subterranean Passage

    “Once I had the power to disappear, to sink inside the dragon’s dreams, to touch the dragon’s sandy skin, as if it were my own” (Amanda, in “Subterranean Passage”). Original poetry from Barbara Klar and Michael Crochetiere, excerpts from Maria Flook, Julia Alvarez, Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe, together with a foreboding electro-acoustic soundscape by composers Robert Rosen and Shawn Bell combine to create a dark, fluid universe where unexpected story fragments arise suddenly and, one by one, become integrated into the children’s resolute mission. “Subterranean Passage” is a haunting, evocative lesson in constructing and controlling one’s own psychic…

  • BARE

    Dee wakes up with a stranger in her bed, while her neighbour Paul is discovering new spice in an old relationship. When inner-city living finds them at closer quarters than they might expect, sensual surprises and unexpected desires are the order of the day.

  • Scrambled Porn

    Distinguishing the drama from the documentary, the analog from the digital, the fact from the fiction, and the technology from the sexuality will be more perverse in the twenty-first century.

  • Passenger

    “Passenger” is a visual, and interrupted, journey exploring layers of subway train images which have been altered and abstracted through scratched text and painted frames. The film’s soundtrack reflects the chain of thoughts in one’s mind: angst, displacement, numbness, anger, tolerance, peace, memories and feelings which can be encountered on the train.

  • Relative Motion

    “Relative Motion” is a series of designs scratched on already processed film, allowing the natural colour of the film to reveal itself. Paint is also added to enhance this state. The designs are expressions of emotions and thoughts which are brought to a roar with sound created to accompany the movements of the scratches.

  • After Eden

    “ … a beautiful journey through the wasteland of displaced souls, loosely structured around biblical stories. A man becomes a traveller after his home is destroyed; the story expands to examine those who are literally or metaphorically homeless. In this alien world, existing between fact and fiction, a provocative question is asked: Where does one go after losing paradise?” – Liz Czach, Toronto International Film Festival “Part diary film … part urban ethnography … part excavation in search of faith amidst landscapes of concrete, it is a compilation film assembled from rolls of super-8 and 16mm that I shot, hand…