Genres: experimental

  • Vanauley Project, The

    Cinema circa 1895 as it was with Louis Lumière… Four single-shot vignettes photographed with a vintage hand-cranked 35mm movie camera. These are the first in a series of 35mm observational films created without the assistance of a motion picture laboratory. Hand-processed and printed by the filmmaker, the project acts as an anthropological document of a neighbourhood in transition while celebrating the textural beauty and analog simplicity of early motion picture technology.

  • Passages

    A winter-time journey from Switzerland to Turkey provides a poetic context for reflection. From the bustle of old Constantinople to the deserted Greek and Roman ruins strewn across the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts – quiet observations of past and present, tradition and modernity, innocence and beauty converge to create a meditative space for considering the impermanence of civilization. Shot in black-and-white, the images were processed by hand and edited over a two-year period.

  • Farewell

    An elegy for my Jamaican grandfather, who lived for 98 years. Culled from hand-processed Super 8 memories and Kodachrome images of the heavens, family photographs, and an audio recording of his sweet voice discussing the secret of his long, healthy life, the film bids goodbye to an amazing soul.

  • Christ Mass Sex Dance

    This work, composed of six rolls of superimposed images set to Jim Tenney’s electronic music track “Blue Suede,” is a celebration of the balletic restraints of adolescent sexuality – shaped (in this instance) by “The Nutcracker Suite” by Tchaikovsky as well as the gristly roots of Elvis Presley.

  • Fire #3

    A hand-processed silent film created on a bitterly cruel winter evening. In a freezing bathroom with a single candle and a roll of very old 3 A.S.A. print stock, it became – through the alchemy of light, silver and colour chemistry – a hazy, abstract prayer to the warmth of the sun.

  • Beati Mundo Corde

    The dark tale of a dark ritual. Hand-processed and optically printed, it is an excavation of the emotional state of a young boy sent away to boarding school.

  • nine + 20

    An extremely simple portrait of one of the most humble and deeply spirited people I’ve ever known. Trained in Ireland as a welder, Michael Dolan preferred dancing so he dropped the torch, put on a black suit and began performing internationally with LaLaLa Human Steps. He is now a member of the Volksopera in Vienna.

  • 427 & 401

    I noticed this graveyard in 1989 when I was commuting to a short-lived post-Bachelor of Commerce suit job in Mississauga. Its presence in the landscape was as absurd as the situation that I faced at work – bound on all sides by expressways and airports, it did not belong. Years later, I returned to pay my respects. All the lab work was done at home. The negative was hand-processed, and the print is an original that I made frame-by-frame on an optical printer and then hand-processed. (JP)

  • Urban Creatures

    In a city park, two silver creatures dance the passion and sorrow of the urban landscape.

  • Ladies Room

    “Ladies Room” reveals young women in their most intimate environment – the bathroom. From sterile public schools to underground warehouse raves and glitzy hotel rooms, it takes an insightful, playful and provocative look at a group of NYC girls in a variety of situations and bathrooms. Seen through the lens of fiction, documentary and satire, the range of their experiences and emotions – straddling strength and vulnerability – defines growing up female. Special Jury Award, Arizona International Film Festival, 2004