Genres: documentary

  • Pro Agri

    “Pro Agri” is a record of a tobacco processing plant near Città di Castello in Umbria, central italy. The building was filmed in time-lapse, at a rate of one frame every twelve seconds, from one hour before sunset to one hour afterwards.

  • Sequences and Interruptions

    SEQUENCE XIII (16mm, colour, silent, 2’, 2008) The film is a complete record, in two versions, of a painting by Angela Allen. The cellular structure of the painting is mapped onto the cellular form of the film-strip. INTERRUPTION VII (16mm, colour, silent,14’ 2008) The film is made from a drawing by the artist Angela Allen. I used a combination of single frame shooting combined with in-camera dissolves and other strategies to create the work, which analyses and reconstructs parts of the original drawing. The film’s making processes aim to be in accordance with the generative principles by which the pictures…

  • wandering through secret storms

    In the not-so-distant future an old government archive is discovered. As workers sift through the files in an attempt to put them into context, a storm locked up since the past is unleashed. Thanks to the generous support of The Ontario Arts Council [Media Arts Section].

  • Seeing Through the Spider’s Web

    “SEEING THROUGH THE SPIDER’S WEB” weaves diverse interviews, documentary sequences, archival images, and utilizes a range of film stocks and experimental techniques in order to explore the effect of migration on family relations, faulty memories and failing eyesight.

  • Disappearance of John Ashby, The

    Photographer John Ashby lived and worked on Cape Breton Island for ten years. Struggling to keep ahead, photography has to take a back seat to the day-to-day realities of survival. Then one day John Ashby disappeared. Rumours of his whereabouts began to filter amongst his friends and neighbours. This video searches out John Ashby through the words and images of the Cape Breton community he had become an integral part of. Meanwhile, we catch up to John Ashby on the streets of New York City, musing on life, his past and his future.

  • Spanish Tale, A

    The story of a family and their friend Paco who fled Spain after the Civil War and the threat of imprisonment under Franco’s regime. Told by an English voice-over of the grown daughter of the same family whose photo album we peruse as she recounts their harrowing escape to France and Montreal as a five year old child. The collision of cultures, the clash of beliefs, an idealist’s exile and how the shadow of the past interferes on subsequent events.

  • Fragments de Corps

    Isabelle is a thirty-three year old female boxer from the south shore of Montreal. As an athlete, she inevitably relies on her body. The body is like a mechanical engine. Her gym, a cold building made of steel and concrete, is located in the industrial area of an anonymous and typical suburban town. Her body, made of flesh and muscles, is continually pushed to its limits. French with English subtitles.

  • Michael Snow Up Close

    “MICHAEL SNOW UP CLOSE” was produced on the occasion of The Michael Snow Project, a major, career-spanning, multi-venue retrospective of the artist. The documentary celebrates the multi-faceted shape of Snow’s creative genius, including glimpses of his work in painting, sculpture, film, photo-works, performance, installations, and holography. Discussions with Snow, original documentation of his music and performance work, and excerpts from his avant-garde films, are complemented by interviews with filmmakers Jonas Mekas and Bruce Elder, Snow’s dealer Av Isaacs, the architect Eb Zeidler, museum director Pierre Théberge, curator Louise Dompierre, and others. A deliberately conventional documentary about a deliberately unconventional artist.

  • Grains of Salt

    “GRAINS OF SALT” provides an innovative perspective on the Holocaust. Holocaust survivors’ accounts of how talking about food helped cope with the incredible hunger are interwoven with their poignant stories about life in the concentration camps. We also see how, after being released from the camps, the memory of starvation affects their religious beliefs. The film contributes to our understanding of both past and present conditions where extreme food deprivation has severely impacted peoples’ lives both psychologically as well as physically.

  • Limits of What We Know, The

    In 1993, Amy Bodman took a small crew to Zimbabwe to make a film about land as a living entity. Quietly told through the voice of Zimbabweans, THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW documents the changing landscape of Zimbabwe and its people’s relationship to it. Part travel log, part environmental study and part meditation on life itself, the film reveals nature’s mysterious tenacity in the face of great change. Although the film initially appears to be a portrait of Zimbabwe, THE LIMITS OF WHAT WE KNOW culminates as a heart-felt picture of our changing world as it struggles to compensate…