Genres: experimental

  • gun / play

    After shooting a strange episode that occurred spontaneously on a secluded beach, I realized that there were two other rolls shot years earlier that might work as a triptych. A subconscious reaction to the escalating gun violence in the city and in all corners of the earth. (JP) “Price’s camera peers over the rushes like a hunter. Three incongruent and gloriously hazy sequences discover the malice in the bucolic.” – Chris Kennedy, Images Festival, Toronto 2006 Technical Specifications hand-processed 16mm, optically printed to 35mm for release. black and white, 8:45 minutes, 1:1.37, cd sound, 24fps. Credits John Price : cinematography,…

  • Struggling in Paradise

    Amidst information overload, communication overkill and mediated emotions, Paradise, as a state of complete happiness, remains a fleeting promise, a state of mind impossible to achieve. Some seek refuge in the creative process, some multiply “various emotions” while other just drive along on the road to Paradise, thinking there is “nothing to worry about.” In the end, it is just all about “the drive.”

  • 1000 Feet

    A walk through the city of Maputo becomes a poetic visual essay. Inspired by two Mozambican poems, its central themes are: shoes, time, space, history, humanity, reading the asphalt and the intrusive effect of a camera. Scenes from everyday life and a series of portraits link with radio loops and local ambiance sound. The curious gaze of a foreigner gradulally evolves to the fascinated look of a gues enchanted by the city and its people. Strangeness, obstruction and mutual unease are step by step replaced by contact and communication. Distance and closeness measured in feet: the theme for a possible…

  • Hydromancy

    In search of the oceanic feeling: the fusion of subject and object. The oceanic feeling refers to the experience of feeling connected, the sensation of something unlimited and infinite, oceanic as it were. In “Hydromancy” this is made visual with abstract images of water, both a source of inspiration and a creative force. A water dance and dancing water combined. Waves of aspiration, inspiration and exhaltation. An exiting inner search to face the imaginary.

  • Going Back Home

    Turmoil of unsheltered childhood; the dwelling as self. “Louise Bourque’s ‘Going Back Home’ conveys a sense of loss and upheaval with just a few images.” – Steve Anker and Kathy Geritz, program notes, San Francisco International FIlm Festival, 2002 “The disasters of life can make it hard to go home. Bourque’s brief, beautiful, and affecting film goes by so quickly it’s printed twice on the reel, so you can get a second look.” – Program notes, Images Festival, 2001 “To the scratchy sounds of an old music box… ‘Going Back Home’ weaves snippets of old reels of houses collapsing, fires…

  • Along the Road to Altamira

    “The lateral movement of the title “Along the Road to Altamira” signals that we are about to embark on a journey through Spain. Our final destination is Altamira, where the first forms of representation by Paleolithic man still remain. These images, a narrator tells us in German, would have remained undiscovered if not for the childish curiosity and unconditioned vision of the young girl who noticed the ancient paintings of bison on the cave ceiling. “In keeping with this idea, the film takes us on a journey toward a final destination of symbolic import. However, what one sees along the…

  • Jolicoeur Touriste

    An enclosed space, a struggle against the constraints of personal isolation explored through a fractured narrative. A man living in a broken-down rented room in a Tourist Inn travels through his inebriation, his memories and his fantasies, transcending the limits of time and space, which suddenly intertwine. A film about loss and absence. Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Short, Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia, 1990; Outstanding Achievement Award, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, 1989; Honorable Mention, The Canadian International Annual Film Festival, Ottawa, ON, 1990; Opening film, 39th International Mannheim Film Week, Germany, 1990

  • Imprint

    “Louise Bourque’s ‘Imprint’ focuses obsessively on home-movie images of her family’s house, which seems gloomily oppressive, almost filling the frame; she repeats the images with various alterations – tinted, bleached, partly scraped away – as if attacking the place, turning its darkness into light.” – Fred Camper, The Reader, Chicago, April 16 1999 “‘Imprint’… throttles and exhausts a particular memory-image (a family on a porch in an ambiguous position – good-bye/hello, reuniting/reinforcing/celebrating?) and traces its corrosion and dissolution even as it intensifies it physically. Dyes, zip-a-toning, a weird daguerrotype shiny effect, and ripping makes for a very concrete trip.” –…

  • People in the House, The

    “‘The People in the House’ examines the dynamics of a family in crisis and questions the role of religious devotion in the perpetuation of dysfunction. The exterior of the house is never seen, and the family’s anxiety, as is often the case, plays out within the confines of four walls. Filmed with a dreamy, surreal quality, ‘The People in the House’ dwells within the tension between harmony and chaos.” – Liz Czach, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue, Canada, 1995 Selected screenings & awards: Best Experimental Film, The 14th Uppsala Short Film Festival, Sweden, 1995; Special Jury Award, The 31st Yorkton Short…

  • Fissures

    A film about forgetting and remembering, about past presences and the traces they leave. In making this piece, Bourque literally distorted the personal home movie images appearing on the film plane through various manipulations in the process of doing her own low-tech contact printing. The images warp and fluctuate, creating a distorted space of fleeting apparitions, like re-surfacing memories. The footage was hand-processed and solarized as well as hand-coloured through toning. “A very short film that meshes the beautifully overlapping style of Bruce Baillie with rhythm and sound to create a meditation in blue.” – Stephen Brophy, artsMedia, March15 –…