In this hyper-stylized western set against a winterscape, a mysterious girl with a criminal past wants to make a fresh start and decides to symbolize this decision by getting her very first tattoo. She meets two tattoo artists who are immediately smitten with her, and in the time-honoured tradition of the western, the artists battle each other in a duel for the right to design the tattoo.
Filter Films
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“Fabric” is an experimental narrative about a woman’s attempts to reconnect with her family. The film uses magical realism to visualize a physical process of grief, exploring both real and imagined spaces.
Fabric
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“You see nothing but a white, crystal white plate, and water dripping into the plate, from the ceiling, from high, and you hear the sound of the water dripping. The film is ten minutes long. I can imagine only St. Francis looking at a water plate and water dripping so lovingly, so respectfully, so serenely. The usual reaction is: ‘Oh, what is it anyhow? Just a plate of water dripping.’ But that is a snob remark. That remark has no love for the world, for anything. Snow and Wieland’s film uplifts the object, and leaves the viewer with a finer attitude toward the world around him; it can open his eyes to the phenomenal world. And how can you love people if you don’t love water, stone , glass?” – Jonas Mekas, New York Times, 1969
Dripping Water
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Or if you don’t have money eat tuna. A golf ball finally gets Mike Harris, cost-cutting conservative head of government in Ontario.
An Act of God..lf
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Art forms have been killing each other off for centuries. In an artistic autopsy, Aiken and Majzels examine the death of vaudeville. Through dance, performance and music, this film uses the trappings of vaudeville to tell the story of its demise. With a cabaret of sad double acts, aging burlesque dancers and tired magicians, the film takes a humorous and macabre look into the forgotten arts.
La Revue
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“A question I had in mind was: what is the place of the human being in the cosmos? More and more we think about what is ‘beyond’. Less and less is art concerned. I don’t know why. The question may seem a bit grandiose, but I have approached it quite simply in the film. For one thing, I have never worked with color photography as primary background to cut-out animation before. I was surprised that the result was so powerful (helped by John Davis’ very resonant music). “It was liberating to release human figures into an apperception of suggested space, along with the primordial enigma of the revolving sphere.” – LJ
Solar Sight
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A haunting and poetic vision of war and its effects on everyday life, created without images of war. The film’s structure is drawn from road signs found as fragments of a trip, with the quotidian images – of landscapes, city life, children playing, a wedding – collected like a diary in a combination of richly saturated colour and high-contrast black-and-white footage. In contrast to the emotive quality of the imagery and music, the voice-over/text provides a dispassionate and chilling guide on what to expect and how to behave in times of war: “Before proceeding with the burial, it is important to be sure of the identity of the dead one. In the case of dismembered bodies, it is necessary to define with precision, which parts belong to which body.” Beautiful and mournful, “El cuento (The Story)” is a paean to all that is lost with war.
El cuento (The Story)
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A film diary. 673 finger/toe nails saved, a large mess of 16mm rescued from darkroom garbage bins. The former adhered with nail polish topcoat to the latter, optically printed, and finished as a print.
Keratin Reserve
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Boy and Rabbit embark upon a voyage into the night. From a small paper boat, they watch the wooded shore and its special inhabitants… Selected screenings: Ottawa International Animation Festival, 2010; Les rendez-vous du cinéma québécoise, 2011; Melbourne International Animation Festival, 2011; London International Animation Festival, 2011
Traversée, La (The Crossing)
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A tiny baroque ode to fleeting darkness and pretty make-believes. Partly made in Fredericton with the support of the New Brunswick Film Co-op , the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec’s artist-in-residence Program, the National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker Assistance Program and TAIS, the Toronto Animated Image Society. Music arranged and recorded by Marc-André Simard. Selected screenings: Anim’ est International Animation Festival, Special Mendion of the Jury, 2010; Les rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (Montreal, QC) 2010; Festival du n nouveau cinéma (Montreal, QC), 2009; Interfilm Berlin, 2009
Afloat at Dawn
