Film Format: 16mm

  • Paradise Lost

    A poetic assembly of 1950s’ and 1960s’ Soviet film print fragments and graphic text that elicits a romantic tale of an individual’s fall from grace.

  • Clinton Special: A Film About the Farm Show, The

    The summer of 1972: the Theatre Passe Muraille Company moves into the farming community of Clinton, Ontario, and makes a play out of the stories and events of the people of that region. The following spring, the company takes its play, “The Farm Show,” on a tour of the farming communities of southwestern Ontario, sometimes performing in auction barns and town halls. “The Clinton Special” is a documentary of the tour and includes scenes from the play.

  • Closet Case

    “In this quintessential ‘coming out’ film, a grinding rhythm leads us through a passage of closed doors, as a man struggles to break free from his literal and social confinement.” – Images Festival of Independent Film & Video catalogue, 1995

  • Finite, The

    “The Finite” lays bare the ephemeral nature of family, home and life on earth through a combination of home movies and archival footage from a science documentary. The two forms of imagery entwine along a common and inescapable course toward destruction, revealing the gravity of personal loss. Selected screenings: Toronto International Film Festival, 2004; CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2006

  • Observatory, The

    An ambient track of evening sounds accompanies rephotographed sketches of the night sky by Jerry Spevak. “The Observatory” turns the heavens on its head: the blackness of space becomes the white of the page, the stars and galaxies precise points of black graphite. The pages of Spevak’s sketchbook are animated to capture the rotation of and movement through a vast, spectacular universe. Selected screenings: Toronto International Film Festival, 2004; Best of the LIFT $99 No Excuses Film Festival, Toronto, 2004

  • Players

    Fieldstone Secondary School has a junior boys’ basketball team unlike any other. The trials and tribulations of high school life are revealed through the team, known as the Sultans. “Every game has its memories, you decide whether they’re good or bad. I’ve seen players grow into and out of sports and they all seem to forget about one thing: loyalty” (Coach Fernando Neves).

  • Placebo

    An “undeveloped faggot” has just turned 30 and been left by his boyfriend. Finally, he can remember his dreams. In Spanish with English sub-titles. Selected screenings: Toronto Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival, 2004; Chicago Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, 2004; Best Student Narrative, Wisconsin International Film Festival, 2004; Sao Paulo Shorts Film Festival, 2004; Mix NYC, 2003.

  • Pangaea

    “Diego Costa’s ‘Pangaea’ delicately employs overlapping images to ruminate on the male body, locating complex, mythical metaphors for human connection in everything from bodily fluids to land masses to text messaging.” – Eric Beltmann, Flipsidemovies.com “‘Pangaea’ is a cerebral trip through the thoughts and torments of a young man who has been used and abused by a lover he thought he could trust.” – Seten Snyder, movies.zertnet.com

  • Coconut/Cane & Cutlass

    The title of “Coconut/Cane & Cutlass” represents the psyche behind the collective memory, history and imagination of Indo-Caribbean people. The film is a mythic/poetic rumination on exile, displacement, and nationhood from the perspective of an Indo-Caribbean lesbian who migrated to Canada twenty years ago. Intersections of the autobiographical voice (in the realm of mythic/memory and the personal) co-mingle with the historical, to produce a film that is neither an “official historical document” nor a “personal history.” Instead, “Coconut/Cane & Cutlass” is a hybrid fusion of the autobiographical, historical and experiential, in an episodic structure that is richly textured and layered…

  • Working Portraits

    A document in the form of a portrait. Shot in June 2000 at Philip Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario, this films stays close to the participants and the film medium itself as they work on their projects. With Becka Barker, Helen Hill, Deirdre Logue, Kelly Krotine, Alexis Rubenstein (1975-2002) and Karyn Sandlos. Thanks to Phil Hoffman, Sabastjan Henrickson of Niagara Custom Lab in Toronto, and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. “Process must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself.” –…