Genres: documentary

  • Raising the Bar: The Fresh Voices Project

    A documentary tracing the experiences of five Canadian contemporary-dance choreographers. Anne Troake (St. John’s, NFLD), Sarah Williams (Montreal, QC), Nova Bhattacharya (Toronto, ON), Tania Alvarado (Edmonton, AB), and Susan Elliott (Vancouver, BC) are poised to make their mark nationally. Their backgrounds are as varied as the regions they come from. All were selected by the Canada Dance Festival (CDF) in 2002 to participate in a three-year multi-faceted project. The documentary begins at the 2002 festival with the choreographers in performance. The filmmakers follow the progress of the artists at a three-week residency the next year at the Banff Centre where…

  • All Fall Down

    “All Fall Down” is an experimental documentary that takes as its starting point a nineteenth century farmhouse in Southern Ontario, Canada, and asks the question “what has been here before?” The film weaves together a complex temporal structure that juxtaposes the lives of two figures, one historical (Nahneebahweequa: a nineteenth century aboriginal woman and land rights activist) and the other contemporary (an ex-pat drifter and father of the filmmaker’s step-daughter) across two hundred years. “All Fall Down” explores these characters through a variety of archival materials: diaries, landscape paintings, photographs, heritage films, poems, phone messages, maps, historical reenactments, songs) that…

  • Retrato Oficial 2 | Official Portrait 2

    Retrato Oficial 2 | Official Portrait 2 animates the dissimulation and reconstruction of the great liberator of Chile, 19th-century revolutionary and republican Bernardo O’Higgins, and the historical reach of the late-20th-century dictator Augusto Pinochet. Based in part on a conceit borrowed from Raul Ruiz’s essay Images of Images and original footage shot by Patricio Guzman on September 11, 1973, the short video is an exploration of the mediated image and the mnemonic possibilities of video and still image technologies.

  • Lucky Girl

    Four minutes in the day that I went to meet a man at sunset in the park. “Lucky Girl” recalls a seemingly insignificant moment that could have turned out very differently. – AG CALQ Award for Best Film in Art & Experimentation, Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (2009); Spirit Award, Brooklyn International Film Festival (2010)

  • Belonging

    Toronto’s diverse culture and heritage are explored through a couple’s belongings, juxtaposed with the neighborhood in which they live.

  • Difference of Opinion

    This is a short tape about date rape that shows how two people can have different perceptions of the same situation. A great discussion starter for issues surrounding sexual assault and dating. Suitable for High School and up.

  • Becoming Susan

    BECOMING SUSAN is a portrait documentary about Toronto activist Susan Gapka. The film enters Susan’s world through an exploration of the spaces around her, with Susan’s story filling these personal spaces before her visual representation does. BECOMING SUSAN presents a way of sharing the world of a trans-woman without focusing on the physical. Instead, visual fragments of Susan and her world serve as powerful metaphor for Susan’s journey from pieces to a whole. As we explore each new piece presented by the documentary we begin to understand that each is as important as the last to understanding her. Multi-faceted and…

  • Island, The

    The filmmaker considers, with the help of animation, a piece of fan mail he received. Jury Award for Best Short Film, Pink Apple Film Festival, Zurich, Switzerland (2009) Selected Screenings: Berlinale, 2009 (Germany); Toronto International Film Festival, 2009; International Short Film Festival Winterthur, 2009 (Switzerland); Frameline LGBT Film Festival, 2009 (San Francisco, USA); image + nation Film Festival, 2009 (Montreal, Canada)

  • Carpet Diem

    A two-minute creative documentary made of two unaltered still photos: one taken by a cell phone, the other by a professional Hollywood paparazzo. Selected Screenings: Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, 2009 (Toronto, ON); CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2009 (Toronto, ON)

  • Oh Me 2

    An animated essay which is a joint effort by both the artist and his son – a psychology prof. – to “describe” what it’s like to be living with manic depression and creating under its influence.