“Game On” examines the glory of competition, the tension between opponents, the strategies of the game, the sweat of the players, the taste of victory. Shot on Super 8 with music by Kids on TV.
Filter Films
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The house that bursts; the scene of the crime; the nucleus. A universe collapses on itself: all hell breaks loose. “In my dream there’s a war going on. It’s Christmas time. I’m running and I’m carrying myself as a child. It’s dark in the tunnel and I’m heading towards the light, the daylight.” – Louise Bourque, from the film’s voice-over narration Selected Screenings & Awards: Editing Award, Cinematexas, Austin, TX, 2005; Director’s Citation, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Jersey City, NJ, 2006; Opening Night film, Media City Festival, Windsor, ON, 2006; Whitney Biennial, New York, NY, 2006; Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 2006; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2005; Impakt, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2005; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, German, 2006; 48th Bilbao International Film Festival, Bilbao, Spain, 2006
L’éclat du mal / The Bleeding Heart of It
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A short experimental animated film. Using hand-drawn imagery and found imagery taken from many sources. All combined to present an apocalyptic portrait of the western industrialized 20th-century world.
Bad Karma
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Will has put his life on hold to nurse Gertrude, his dying mother, who only wishes to die with dignity, and soon. At odds with his sister Cathie due to her conservative religious beliefs, Will’s closely proscribed life is suddenly changed when he encounters Victor. Victor, a vampire, helps fulfill Gertrude’s wish, only to become emotionally entangled with Will. When Will is attacked by Cathie and her goons, Victor must act to save Will in the only way he can, but has he done the right thing?
They Only Come Out At Night
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Abandoned by her lover, a young woman finds comfort and safety in her basement apartment. Mundane routines, a diet of junk food and the warmth of the television insulate her from the pain and betrayal of her ill-fated relationship. Eventually, The Basement Girl emerges – transformed and ready to “make it on her own.” “The Basement Girl” breaks new cinematic territory by employing multiple formats from traditional 16 mm film to toy cameras including a modified Nintendo Game Boy digital camera and the Intel Mattel computer microscope. “Midi Onodera’s latest film is a witty and wonderful meditation on how women translate the images that surround them (from Bionic Woman to That Girl!, from Barbra Streisand to Maya Deren). The film is funny and touching at the same time, as it looks at familiar texts in new contexts. For anyone interested in women and visual culture, this is an absolute must-see.” – Judith Mayne, Ohio University “Who can turn the world on…? Midi Onodera’s latest film could equally well be titled The Most Fun Ever! She is a processor par excellence, mixing loss, melodrama, isolation and indulgence with the choicest morsels of lesbian-infected popular culture. Barbra, That Girl, The Bionic Woman and, of course, MTM convince ‘the basement girl’ that she’s ‘gonna make it after all.’” -Amy Villarejo, Cornell University
Basement Girl, The
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“i have no memory of my direction” is a feature-length experimental narrative. The story unfolds through a Canadian-born Japanese woman’s voice-over as she dreams her way though Japan. Ostensibly searching for an emotional connection with her aging father, the woman contemplates her own inherited culture and familial touchstones. Her North American pop-culture sensibility fuses with a distorted Japanese perspective to create a surreal interpretation of a “Japan of the imagination.” This fictional landscape is peppered with invented Japanese myths, ruminations on memory loss, the temporal space of digital photography and the ghosts of inherited imagination. DVD version available for institutional purchase. Special features: study guide, interview with the director, photographs. Click the link to read a review by Kristin W. Springer in the on-line journal “Films for the Feminist Classroom” – http://ffc.twu.edu/issue_1-1/rev_Springer_1-1.html
I have no memory of my direction
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“Shadows Choose Their Horrors” is the dark and melodic diary of a necromancer, as she lives her secret life between the world of mortals and the realm of lost souls. The film, shot silent with intermittent inter-titles, tells the story of dark and sinister forces as they move through the life of Madame G (Winsome Brown). Madame G tries to bond with her favorite undead, using magic and ritual to give them life and pleasure, but a devastating outcome drives her to do the unthinkable. Finally, Madame’s struggle to overcome the loneliness of evil brings her out, into the light, where a new beginning finds her. The film was inspired by the un-staged Aaron Copland ballet “Grohg” and early silent horror films.
Shadows Choose Their Horrors
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“Negation” is an attempt to create an abstract document of where I live, Regina, Canada. During production there was one restriction while shooting – everything had to be shot in a 10-block radius from my house. The use of negative B/W imagery was utilized in an attempt to “look” at my familiar surroundings from a different perspective, and I felt that this formal choice would provide a more accurate representation of the location being documented.
Negation
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Garney Willis is an 88-year-old cowboy who lives in the “Wild West.” His granddaughter is a filmmaker who lives in the “big city.” When she visits his ranch to make “Cowboys Don’t Cry,” they haven’t been together in 20 years. She sees him as a hero in a Western movie. He sees her as the little girl he had given a pony for Christmas. This intimate documentary portrait traces their efforts to communicate with each other. More importantly, it reveals an old man’s undying idealism and his joy in day-to-day living.
Cowboys Don’t Cry
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“Fragile” is a video that deals primarily with theories of remembrance through a simple formal examination of the texture, rhythm, and colour of a city at night. Shot on HI-8, this video deals primarily with the relationship that is created between the abstracted imagery, and the linear soundtrack that records my mother reading to my sister and myself as children.
Fragile
