Genres: documentary

  • Western Brook Pond

    A boat trip through Western Brook Pond, an ancient fjord in Newfoundland’s Long Range Mountains, carved out over millions of years by tectonic activity and glaciers. Western Brook Pond was shot on video and 16 mm film, which was hand processed with apples and coloured with turmeric and walnuts. Note: Contains strobe effects.

  • Epitaph

    Epitaph is an examination of site and memory. It follows the effects of plate tectonics on the landscape of Chile – the filmmaker’s birthplace – and the small and large cycles of destruction and rebuilding the ever-present earthquakes trigger. Filmed in both Chile and on the Tablelands in Canada, a site central to the modern understanding of plate tectonics, Epitaph incorporates eco-processed 16 mm footage, video, documents from public and private archives, and found footage to weave an epitaph to a home in the process of leaving the filmmaker, first as a result of exile and then to the gradual…

  • Gan Tang, The Lake

    In the summer of 2023, the government of Jiujiang launched the Gan Tang Lake Cleansing Project. Within weeks, this ancient lake with over two millennia of history was drained. Nearby in Gan Tang Park, a boy wakes up in the rain. There, the destiny of Gan Tang awaits.

  • The Flower and The Flood

    Following the seasonal cycle of a saffron farm based in the Fraser Valley, the film explores unmechanized labor through harvesting the delicate crocus stamen by hand. After an atmospheric river decimates the flourishing saffron crop in 2021, the flood waters temporarily return Semá:th Xó:tsa to the valley more than a century after its forced draining. The film traces the interconnected history of this sacred lake with the rebuilding of the saffron crop; cultivating community and the most expensive spice in the world. Collaborating with the saffron crocus and other plants through eco-processing and analogue processes, the family garden offers us…

  • Trajectories of Now

    Over an 18-month period, 18 racialized and gender diverse artists took part in creative research to develop artworks and activations responding to the guiding question “What change do you want to make with your art?”. Their work culminated in their group exhibit Trajectories of Now: An Anthology. Through visual, audio, and tactile works, Trajectories of Now documented critical narratives of relationships to identities; both personal and collective. In this short film, eight Trajectories artists discuss their artworks and processes for voicing, surfacing and amplifying creative advocacies and resistances for social change.

  • Home for Christmas

    “Here is the quintessential Hancox ‘personal documentary,’ a film in which both the production and role of traditional documentary and autobiographical filmmaking are thrown into question. Using his camera to record a visit out east by train to spend Christmas with the family, Hancox …. used his familiarisation with the annual rtitual as a form of a script… Although we see the journey through the subjective judgement of Hancox’s eyes, it is his intent to transfer the material from original event to camera, to editing, and finally to the audience, so that the personal content of the film… becomes universal.”…

  • Home Movie

    Mostly close-up views of my house and family. (PL)

  • Hot Pepper

    “Hot Pepper” plunges the viewer deep into the music of Clifton Chenier and its sources in the surroundings of rural and urban Louisiana. The great French accordionist mixes rock and blues with his unique version of Zydeco music, a pulsating combination of Cajun French with African undertones. In addition to scenes of Clifton belting it out at sweaty dance halls, the film winds his music through the bayous and byways of the countryside and into the streets and homes of his people.

  • House Movie

    “House Movie” is a direct autobiography, with events interpreted as they were in progress. It is about living intimately with another person, in a rented house which never becomes home, due to an unavoidable separation. At times the camera almost takes the point of view of the architecture, as witness to the kind of transient emotions common to houses like this. Using a Rachmaninoff excerpt, the film is edited symphonically, with theme and subordinate theme, development and re-capitulation, echoed in the recurring visual motifs and rhythmic cutting. “The extravagant camera movement that marks ‘House Movie’ is not so much lyrical…

  • Huey Lewis and the News: Be-Fore!

    “Huey Lewis and the News: Be-Fore!” follows one of the world’s top rock-and-roll bands of the 80s and a crew of fifty technicians to the Bahamas for the making of a music video for their number one hit single, “Stuck With You” for their album, “FORE!” Blank takes us behind-the-scenes for an off-beat look at what happens when a song is transformed into visuals and musicians are transformed into actors. Hidden in the straightforward reportage are sly comments on the MTV machine, sexism in the media, and the business of rock-and-roll. Best of all, Huey Lewis and the News maintain…