“Shoulders on a Map” is a film about travel, form, and essentially my thoughts at the time towards Canada as a nation. It is the third part in a series of North American landscape films that I have been shooting for the past few years. The central aim of the film is to formally examine the Rocky Mountains on Super 8 film. Simple formal devices are utilized in creating this portrait. “An endless inventory of trees, snow, rocks and water rolls by onscreen in this experimental travelogue. Shoulders on a Map is a Super 8 homage to transportation, motion and the breathtaking landscape of the Canadian Rockies.” – Ben Murray, Toronto International Film Festival Programmer
Filter Films
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“Arc Light” is a film essentially about travel. It is the second part in a series of North American landscape films that I have been shooting for the past few years. The central aim of the film is to formally examine two of the most photographed landscapes on earth. Simple formal devices are utilized in creating this simple portrait of Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon.
Arc Light
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“Tortured by Sidewalks” is a very simple film about portraiture. It is the first part in a series of North American landscape films that I have been shooting for the past few years. The central aim of the film is to make a filmic “sketch” of one of the most photographed landscapes on earth – Peggy’s Cove. The film was shot on Super 8 and Pxlvision in order to convey my reaction to this striking landscape.
Tortured by Sidewalks
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This film explores the morph-like quality of the Serpentine Dance and its intricate play on the visible and the invisible, which extends to the larger context and legacy its originator, the American born Loïe Fuller. “fugitive l(i)ght” is composed of elaborately reworked found footage, originally captured by Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers, of various renditions and imitations of Fuller’s Serpentine performances, where glimmers of her presence slip into the film by means of the artist’s absence; both Fuller’s and my momentary suspensions through my use of chance operation. These found films are woven into intricately reworked sequences using several computer programs and following the poetic interpretations of several artists who experienced Fuller’s performances in person: texts of Mallarmé, lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec, sketches of Whistler, and a futurist manifesto on dance by Marinetti. The music for this film was composed by Toronto based composer Colin Clark who reworked various LP recordings of Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” the music that often accompanied Fuller’s Serpentine performances. “fugitive l(i)ght” emphasizes rhythmic structures over and above representation, by drawing the viewer’s gaze into a maze of multiple folds of continuously unfolding colour patterns. “fugitive l(i)ght” aims to evoke a charge of energy that might have been experienced by the audience of the 1890s in the presence of Fuller’s light performances, and therefore permitting her to meet us again, one century later by making herself and her performance (in)visible to us through its palpitating playful rhythm expressed as a field of energy that resonates within the spectator. Selected Screenings: International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2007
fugitive l(i)ght
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‘Sisyphus’ is a silent 16mm film shot on a Bolex exploring a journey that never ends. I made this film at renowned experimental filmmaker Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm workshop in Mount Forest, Ontario. Originally, I wanted to create a simple statement about overcoming depression. The ultra short narrative in ‘Sisyphus’ uses heartbreak as a metaphor for depression, since depression is just that – being heartbroken about life. The creative process and the practice of handmaking films speaks to treating life as a work in progress, thereby positively embracing the permanence of Sisyphus in my life. The lush, organic imagery in ‘Sisyphus’ was created by hand-processing 16mm black and white footage in a bucket and hand-tinting and toning individual pieces of film.
sisyphus
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“Tough Enough” is a short experimental film which looks at how being outside of a mainstream gender identity can shut you off from even the simplest touch. As a young queer child, touching people of either sex can be extremely loaded. What can one do to confront this? This filmmaker decides to be tackled repeatedly in order to “shock” their body into feeling.
Tough Enough
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Adam Garnet Jones and Sarah Kolasky combine film, video, and experimental animation to create a painfully intimate documentary about Toronto artist Morgan Mavis. ‘Can You Love Me?’ is a seductive exploration of the artist’s narcissism and insatiable need for love. The film begins by describing a poster campaign, which was launched by Morgan Mavis as her thesis project for the Ontario College of Art and Design. She posted a self-portrait around the city of Toronto on every available surface, with text that read, “Can You Love Me?” and listed a phone number. In the photo, Morgan’s pierced tongue sticks out impishly from below a dark pair of sunglasses and her trademark hot-pink hair. She soon received over a thousand calls, but one man left a total of 53 messages in a single evening, essentially convincing himself that he was in love with her. Intrigued by the unknown man’s intense attraction to her, Morgan decided to push the conceptual boundaries of her project by responding to his calls. As they corresponded, and eventually met face to face, their interactions became incorporated into Morgan’s project. The film explores Morgan’s complex and often unsettling motivations behind using herself as a subject in her art. Throughout the film, Morgan plays with fantasies of self-made fame, while willingly exposing herself to public criticism. The documentary becomes a formal extension of Morgan’s initial project, as the filmmakers become an active audience, evaluating her personality, interpreting her intentions, and re-presenting them in a new form. Sarah Kolasky and Adam Garnet Jones employ a startling variety of techniques, combining live action film and video footage with scratch animation, paint on film, stop-motion and cut-out animation, to deepen the viewer’s understanding of Morgan’s story. ‘Can You Love Me?’ is not simply a documentary, an animated film, an experiment with formal techniques, or an examination of one woman’s art and sexual politics, but it manages to be all of these things at once. “Stuns viewers… What we want is more of this kind of experimentation.” – Guy Dixon, Globe & Mail “ **** ” – Eye magazine
Can You Love Me?
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“Covert Action” examines the seduction behind social interaction, remaking these gestures into a dance through the use of looped movies. I wanted to foreground the multiple fictions, the “facts” forever obscured in the fragments of memory. The result is an ambiguous narrative developed by its periphery, impossible to trace, disturbing, explosive. (Abigail Child) “Here rupture and repetition comprise the structuring principle. The film explodes in your face; it drives on until its final image, a summation of its prehistory, history and future – a tree being uprooted. What could be a more apt metaphor for the contemporary crisis in narrativity and sexuality?” – Robert Hilferty, New York Native
Covert Action
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“Lapse Lose All” both documents and obscures the collage painting process of Toronto artist Kathryn MacKay. Time-lapse photography seems to speed up the activity of painting by concentrating the work of several weeks into a few minutes, concealing more than it reveals. The title of the documented work is “Hammett’s Eclipse,” and it is indeed eclipsed in this film – first by the body of the painter at work and finally by the reversal of time itself. Layered sounds, recorded live in MacKay’s studio, offer an ambient audio echo of the visual complexity of the painted work. This work can be presented theatrically or looped and projected as an installation.
Lapse Lose All
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A rediscovered roll of super 8 film inspires the filmmaker to ponder friends that get lost with the passing of time. This bittersweet ode to friendship considers how someone can know all your secrets one year and somehow disappear from your life the next.
Stars
