Sira’, in Arabic, literally translated, means biography. Arabs are a people known for their oral tradition. Through excavated footage and narration, Sira examines the displacement of a family, beginning with the event the catapulted their exodus from Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion.… >>>
BUBBA shows the portrait of an old man (the filmmaker's grandfather), altered in several, increasingly abstracting ways. The first way the man is shown is through composite imaging, and the use of masks while shooting 16mm on a Bolex camera, achieving surreal, distorted, cubist-like impressions of the face. The second effect was achieved by sandwiching the negative print and positive print of the original portraits and printing them using a Model J printer. The third, and final effect was generated by hand processing the negative/positive hybrid, alongside negatives from a previous film. The concluding effect is a feeling of the loosening of ties to the material world, as images begin to appear and disappear and change, the very physical, concrete idea of a man's portrait becomes distorted, jagged, and ghostly. The same set of images come and go, bringing into focus the viewer's own memory. The film asks us, 'How will the memory of our loved ones persist with us through time? How will they change?'… >>>
Collaging appropriated footage with original imagery, WATER ONCE RULED collapses the past, present and future into a single repeating loop. Linking the introduction of satellite imagery with the colonization of our own as well as other planets, the video considers water – and the lack there of – as the distressed resource connecting Mars’ history with Earth’s present and future.… >>>
Being natural born pattern seekers, we are forever looking for this or that clue to help explain what otherwise might appear unfathomable. Fundamentally Catalyst represents a type of diary without dates, of memories reconstructed to formulate my story. A story that takes place in time and space, shaped by the earth and sky. Merging super 8 mm footage that I filmed many years ago with some of my more recent DSLR/HDV tape footage, Catalyst investigates how each medium shaped my story as well as the gaps in time when each sequence was filmed.… >>>
Traje de Luces | Suit of Lights is an expressive documentary composed with footage of a Spanish bullfight, that iconic imagery of highly decorated masculinity and violence masked as nationalism. The footage was drawn from Jacques Madvo Collection material filmed in Spain between 1976-1978. Madvo shot this footage at a time when Spain began its difficult and flawed transition to democracy in the years following dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975. The film consists of 16mm footage that has been decayed in soil, contact-printed and laboriously re-photographed and these abstractions of light and darkness ground the inquiry surrounding why citizens accept the harm done to others in their name.… >>>
For many years a large photograph featuring 60 women in western style costumes has hung in the hallway at the entrance of Sara Angelucci’s house. The picture was given to her husband by his Aunt Dagmar. They knew little about it, other than Dagmar had cut the costumes the women were wearing when she worked at Malabar, Toronto’s renowned costume house. Angelucci often wondered who the women were, how the photograph was taken, and what it meant to Dagmar (who died in 2011). Cirkut/Canadettes unpacks the many layers of this photograph, personal, local/social, and technological history. Through archival research Angelucci not only discovers who the women are, but opens up a window into the time the image was taken, Toronto in 1956. Interwoven with her own reflections, her voiceover narrative draws from articles and quotes of the time, giving voice to attitudes of the period, and the desire and mysteries that photographs hold.… >>>
Suk-Fong Wong, a Chinese-Canadian elder, intimately takes us through her treasured collections of Chinese medicines, herbs, and ingredients found in her cupboards. Recorded in 2012, Suk-Fong speaks in her first language, Toisanese, a dialect related to Cantonese, and describes what some of her homemade elixirs and compounds are used for. This includes "loik doy dew", a deer bone alcohol-based elixir used for adding to soups. Most of the ingredients shown can be readily found in Chinese herbal stores.… >>>
This work shows ocean trash on the off-season beach in early spring. Many people think it is very unpleasant. It is a serious environmental problem. However, surprisingly it was so captivating and looked awesome like some kind of art works, ironically. Human amorality, irresponsibility and big ocean waves collaborated to make those objects.… >>>
Filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil, in collaboration with artist Jackson Polys, investigate the recent court case that decided the fate of the remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found in Kennewick, Washington State in 1996. The case pitted the Umatilla people and other tribes, who wanted to provide a burial to the “Ancient One”, against two scientists – one of which from the publicly-funded Smithsonian Institute – who wanted to study the “Kennewick Man”. In order for the claim to fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) it became necessary to establish the lineage of these remains. This fight unleashed a controversy with groups attempting to establish white ancestry, and with this seeking to altogether undermine the indigenous sovereignty over land and ancestors and annul centuries of colonial violence. The evolving science of DNA and cranial morphology was grotesquely called in to testify to the purity of the bones’ ethnicity, where native claims to embodied knowledge of its origin had little means of addressing the court. Despite all of this, the Umatilla people and other tribes ultimately repatriated the “Ancient One” and he was reburied earlier this year in 2017.… >>>
The colonial project on Turtle Island has forced the “gift” of European religion, education, sickness, shame, and prejudice upon Indigenous peoples for generations. Now Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is giving it back! Evoking the style of dramatically elegant commercials for decadent status items, the glistening form of Miss Chief’s Praying Hands inserts a piercing yet playful perspective into the conversation on reconciliation and Indigenous resilience.… >>>