“Hapax Legoma Pt. 3; Critical Mass” – Hapax Legoma are, literally, “things said once.” The Greek scholarly jargon refers to those words that occur only a single time in the entire oeuvre of an author, or in a whole literature. The title brackets a cycle of films, which make up a single work composed of detachable parts, each of which may be seen separately for its own qualities. The work is an oblique autobiography, seen in stereoscopic focus with the phylogeny of film art as I have had to recapitulate it during my own fitful development as a filmmaker. (HF) “As a work of art I think ‘Critical Mass’ is quite universal and deals with all quarrels (those between men and women, or men and men, or women and women, or children, or war). It is WAR!… It is one of the most delicate and clear statements of inter-human relationships and the difficulties of them that I have seen. It is very funny, and rather obviously so. It is a magic film in that you can enjoy it, with greater and greater appreciation, each time you look at it.” – Stan Brakhage
Filter Films
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A playful take on camp and genre (silent/zombie/gangster), four Drag Kings go from cool to walking dead in 7 minutes. Shot on video during a road trip in Italy, most of the scenes are in beautiful Venice. “Dawn of the Drag King Zombies” was made with an improvised, collective process.
Dawn of the Drag King Zombies
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“‘The Stars Are Ruined’ features 22 local Toronto glitterarti filmed in glorious Super 8. A moment in time. A performance. A filmed document made with love. Dedicated to the stars of the past, present and future.” (KC)
Stars Are Ruined, The
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In 2001 the law in the UK for gay porn changed forever. Up until then, the only porn gay men in the UK could enjoy would be illegal, bad quality material mainly from Europe and America. Even up until 2003 certain sexual acts were still illegal in gay porn, whilst their straight counterpart movies still enjoyed greater freedom in sexual expression. Now that has all changed and films can be produced and sold freely in the UK and a new industry is starting to emerge. “The Seven Secrets to Perfect Porn” follows the work of Max Lincoln, who took the opportunity to start his own movie company, Eurocreme, in the UK to make porn to challenge the American and European dominance of hardcore films.
Seven Secrets to Perfect Porn, The
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“Using as it’s text Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I,’ this shocking gift incorporates optically printed home movie footage and an eerily slick close-up of actress Patricia MacGeachy as she rants at lightening speed Beckett’s words about home, family and the confines and alienation associated with being a woman.” – Program notes, Madcat Film Festival, San Francisco, 2001 “A 10-minute tour de force […]. In ‘Just Words,’ Bourque intercuts footage of her mother and her sisters with a performance by actress Patricia MacGeachy of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’; the result is unnerving (as all Beckett is) yet touching (as some Beckett is not).” – Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 1992 Selected screenings & awards: Flaherty International Film Seminar, 50th anniversary, “Inspired Filmmaking”, Poughkeepsie, June 2004; Honorable Mention, The Onion City Film Festival, Chicago, IL, 1993; Honorable Mention, The Canadian International Annual Film Festival, Ottawa, 1992; Honorable Mention and Tour, The 17th Festival of Illinois Film & Video Artists, 1992; Honorable Mention, The 2nd Annual Chicago Student Film & Video Festival, IL, 1992; Best of Cine-X Screening, selection from The 9th Annual Olympia Film Festival, Seattle, 1992
Just Words
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An unearthed time capsule consisting of footage of the maker’s youthful self – an “exquisite corpse” with nature as collaborator. Bourque buried random out-takes from her first three films (all staged productions dealing with her family) in the backyard of her ancestral home (adjoining the grounds of a former cemetery) with the ambivalent intentions of both safe-keeping and unloading them (she was relocating). Upon examining the footage five years later she found that the material contained images of herself captured during the making of her first film. That discovery seemed handed over like a gift and prompted the making of this film, a metaphysical pas-de-deux in which decay undermines the image and in the process engenders a transmutation. “Rossetti’s Beatrice uses Stan Brakhage as interior decorator in this through-the-glass-darkly two-way mirror moving picture of death after death.” – Steve Ausbury, Cinematexas Film Festival catalogue, 2002 Selected screenings and awards: Flaherty International Film Seminar, 50th anniversary, “Inspired Filmmaking”, Poughkeepsie, 2004; Director’s Citation, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Jersey City, NJ, 2003; Jury Award, 36th New York Exposition of Short Film and Video, New York, December 2002; Tour, Antimatter Film Festival Program called “Lightstruck,’ 2004-2006; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2002; Toronto International Film Festival, Ontario, 2002; San Francisco International Film Festival, California, 2003; VIPER International Festival for Film Video and New Media, Basel, Switzerland, 2002; Madrid Experimental Cinema Week, Spain, November 2002.
Self Portrait Post Mortem
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“Jours en fleurs” is a reclamation of flower-power in which images of trees in springtime bloom are subjected to the floriferous ravages of menarcheal substance in a gestation of decay. The title is based on an expression from my coming-of-age in Acadian French Canada where girls would refer to having their menstrual periods as “être dans ses fleurs.” As a result of incubation in menstrual blood for several months, the original images inscribed on the emulsion undergo violent alterations. The shedding of the unfertilized womb depredates the fertilized blossoms and substitutes its own dark beauty. – LB “Those few shorts that attempt something different become standouts […], such as Louise Bourque’s glittering neo-feminist abstraction ‘Jours en Fleurs.’” – Ed Halter, The Village Voice, New York, November 19 – 25, 2003 “I can recommend two must-sees in this year’s Perspective Canada [series at the Toronto International Film Festival]. Louise Bourque’s short ‘Jours en fleurs’ is an abstract series of lapping visuals that finds limitless colour and texture in a degraded image.” – Cameron Bailey, Now Magazine, Toronto, September 4, 2003 Selected screenings & awards: Flaherty International Film Seminar, 50th anniversary, “Inspired Filmmaking”, Poughkeepsie, 2004; Programmers’ Choice Award, Cinematexas, Austin, Texas, September 2003; Experimental Film Award, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Ohio, 2004; Director’s Choice Award, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Jersey City, NJ, December 2005; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 18 & April 23, 2006
Jours en fleurs
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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 – April 15, 2000 Selected screenings & awards: Director’s Citation, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, New Jersey City, NJ, 2002; Best of Balagan, The Boston Underground Film Festival, Boston, MA, 2001; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 2000; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2000; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany, 1999; Split Festival of New Film and Video, Croatia, 1999
Fissures
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“‘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 Film Festival, Yorkton, SK, 1995; European Media Art Festival Tour, 1995; Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 1995; Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia, 1995; Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany, 1995; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany, 1995; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, 1995
People in the House, The
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“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.” – Edward Crouse, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 1998 “Family portraits are frozen memories, saturated with melancholy and nostalgia. Bourque portrays her family in a very ambiguous way in her authentic 8 mm home movies. By bleaching, scratching and perforating the films she creates a rawness which greatly contrasts with the actual content of the films themselves – children playing gently and the warmth associated with ‘home’. The abstracted memories slowly blur into a concrete reality in the film, but the strong desire for love and tenderness still lurks apparent behind this facade of distorted images.” – Annemick Engbers, Impakt Festival catalogue, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1998 Selected Screenings & Awards: Bronze Experimental Film Award and Tour, a 32nd New York Expo of Short Film & Video, 1998; Director’s Citation, The 18th Annual Black Maria Film & Video Festival, Jersey City, NJ, 2000; Opening film, International Biennial Film and Architecture, Graz, Austria, 1997; Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia, 1998; San Francisco International Film Festival, San Francisco, CA, 1998; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany, 1998; Impakt Festival, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1998; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, 1998
Imprint
