This is the director’s cut of the first Canadian film on the subject of AIDS. In 1985-86 it was featured in festivals and theatres around the world. “No Sad Songs” attracted much critical attention for its sardonic dramatic performances which are interwoven throughout the documentary footage. The film centres on Jim Black, 37, and his views on the premature death in store for him. Catherine Hunt, who has a brother in the U.S. with the illness, speaks with remarkable emotion of the values such a crisis brings out in families and friends. An important film to document the Toronto gay community as the AIDS tide was sweeping over it, “No Sad Songs” reaches to understand a little bit about death. Despite its sad subject matter, however, the film has considerable humour and warmth. As it deals with the moral and emotional side of AIDS, as opposed to the medical, the film remains highly relevant. “No Sad Songs” was co-produced by the AIDS Committee of Toronto and is narrated by Kate Reid.
Filter Films
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An effective mime-skit showing the perils of drinking and driving. A mixture of mime, camera work, and special effects prepares us to expect the inevitable crash. An excellent film for use in driver and health education or dramatic arts classes.
No Mime Game
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“No Choice” is a short documentary that deals with the abortion issue and how it relates to women living in poverty. Five women, ranging in age from twenty to forty-five, speak about the lack of choice available to poor people and how, because of their poverty, their reproductive capabilities are often controlled by extraneous factors. Part of “Five Feminist Minutes.”
No Choice
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This film shows the odyssey of a baby-like alien, Nion (performed by mime artist Ian Wallace), who lands on earth and discovers fame, fortune, love, and shopping. As a creature from outer space mimicking the behaviour of human beings, Nion conveys the arbitrary nature of gender roles, as well as the dangers of identifying too closely with these models, for instance when Nion explores the personae of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. An inventive film dealing with stereotypes of gender and desire.
Nion
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“1933. The year? the number? the title? Was it (the film) made then? It’s a memory! (i.e. a Film.) No, it’s many memories. It’s so sad and funny: the departed, departing people, cars, streets! It hurries, it’s gone, it’s back! the film (of 1933?) was made in 1967. You find out, if you don’t already know, how naming tints pure vision.” – Michael Snow “The repeated images are such that they appear to be different each time; to be expanding. ‘1933’ has a machine-mechanical doll rhythmic-like structure.” – Robert Cowan, Take One
1933
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Real time is an oxymoron. The film presents one firing of Vancouver’s famous gun; an event that attracts an audience visible on screen unlike the audience watching the film; ourselves. Our experience of time in our innermost self is unlike our experience of space or mass yet nothing in physics corresponds to the passage of time. How can something we experience as so real be based on an illusion. Norfolk, Virginia also has a Nine O’clock Gun.
Nine O’Clock Gun, The
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“In ‘Atmosphere’ the camera pans back and forth over a body of water at a varying tempo and most people assume that a camera operator is in charge. The final image of the film carries a great deal of significance. It opens up a gap between the film’s appearance and its reality; what it appears to be – what it imitates – is not an object or scene from everyday life, but a film. ‘Atmosphere’ is not just an imitation, but an imitation of an imitation, a metafilm that plays with the viewers’ expectations about cinematic form.” – R. Bruce Elder, Image and Identity
Atmosphere
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A decade and a half ago, poet Robert Kelly told me that the “crucial work” of our time might be what he calls “the dream work”: I hope, with this Series, to have entertained his challenge more thoughtfully than with any previous “dream” filmmaking. In homage to Sigmund Freud & Surrealism, this film proposes clear visual alternatives to the consideration of both “The Interpretation of…” and all previous representations of… dreaming. (SB) “These four short films…have each individually a haunting quality but do importantly work together to form a gradually swelling curve of increasingly intense unease.” -Marie Nesthus
Nightmare Series
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“Night Stream”, a short experimental film about rebirth and fertility, succinctly evokes the flow of tension and trance within the dream state. Selected screenings: New York International Independent Film Festival, New York,1999; Bangladesh International Film Festival, 1999; Madrid Experimental Film Festival, Madrid, Spain,1997; Ann Arbor Festival of Independent and Experimental Film, Ann Arbor, MI,1996.
Night Stream
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This little film (originally painted on IMAX) attempts to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in meditation on sorrow. (SB)
Night Music
