An irreverent look at diapers and dolls, ‘Happy Birthday Hannah’ is a delightfully funny animated short about Suzy, a rag doll who celebrates her owner’s birthday by painting her room.
Filter Films
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Lockhart’s unparalleled understanding of the fantastic and grotesque combined with her completely original aesthetic sensibilities create and inhabit an animated landscape where a seemingly endless parade of kooky little creatures walk themselves straight into trouble, but always find a way out. Enter the surreal, ever-changing world of “Walk for Walk”, a colourful, tripped-out animated landscape filled with catchy songs, eyeball kicks, goofball characters, and a great variety of babies: Warm Baby! Mister Baby! Rich Baby! And more! Created using over 1000 hand-painted paper cutouts, puppets and backgrounds. Selected screenings: Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, ON, 2006; Rendezvous with Madness Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005
Walk For Walk
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“Firstly, I revealed in salutary confession the secret filth of my misdeed, which had long been festering in stagnant silence; and I made it my custom to confess often, and thus to display the wounds of my blinded soul…” (Petrarch, 1352, in a letter to his brother). I wish to avoid any “classical” misunderstandings of the above quote by stating clearly here that any sacrifice of love is, yes, “filth” or at the very least “misdeed.” An academic reading of Petrarch tends to bias thought that there are kinds of love which might be wrong: I do not believe this. (SB)
Confession
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When the ashes of her long-estranged father show up in the mail, Rebecca enlists the help of her siblings to find a suitable dumpsite for his sooty cremains. This black comedy, shot in the dead of winter in Saskatchewan, is an unusual look at the loss of rites of passages in our secular culture. The film’s quiet metaphor – how parental behavior leaves its smudgy mark on us all despite our most frantic efforts to rid ourselves of the legacy – creates a purposeful and layered theme not typically found in comedic films “What Remains Human is a queer absurdist depiction of four siblings who must dispose of their abusive father’s ashes. Various slapstick mishaps fail to overshadow the darker theme of this inventive short.” -Jim Norrena, Frameline International Film Festival, San Francisco
What Remains Human
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Comedy: A tribute to agents worldwide… Johnny (Benjamin Rouse) is a fast talking agent who will say anything to get his talent to believe him and to do what he wants them to do…even if that means at one moment flattering them and the next being shamelessly honest. He contradicts himself constantly due largely to his fast paced shifting reality. Gerald (Pat O’Leary) is one of Johnny’s recruits and he is feeling out the situation at Johnny’s office. In Mr. Dean’s world things can get a little crazy and Gerald is torn between the lure of stardom and his inability to comprehend Johnny. Mr. Dean ‘the star making machine’ has obscure visions of the future for his talent in which they have reached some kind of ahhhh…well….I lost my train of thought there. So…anyway, he tells everyone about his rising superstar, the great Johnny Boulet, whom he believes they all have the potential to be equal to in fame. Gerald, in a moment of brilliance, finally grasps the mystic of Mr. Dean and we see that Johnny has some issues to resolve…or perhaps just some drinking to do…or both. Well you get the picture…the film…oh would you just watch it already!
In Search of Johnny Dean
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This short film stars Tara Spencer Nairn (New Waterford Girl, Corner Gas etc.) as Allie. Allie is an independent girl who was in a relationship that cut too deep into her world. She finds herself in unfamiliar emotional territory and reacts by running away. Danny (Benjamin Rouse) her ex, can’t understand why all has fallen apart. He has also found himself in unfamiliar emotional territory but is driven to fight through this landscape regardless of the danger he faces within himself. Danny is lost in the chaos of love retracted and in this moment of desperation he is willing to go to any end to find understanding…
Broken
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“still | move” is a visual essay of the photographic album in which I sociologically explore the history of my family. Channeling through old postcards, torn letters, and discarded photographs, I document and archive the snapshots, the landscape where my father’s family lived, and the home movies shot by my grandfather. I mark myself, as a filmmaker and a member of the family, to understand the history and to chronicle the decay of a prairie railroad community. – Michael Rollo
still | move
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“SSHTOORRTY” is the image of a staged event which has been divided into 2 halves each superimposed (sound and picture) one on top of the other. The title is the word SHORT superimposed on the word STORY. It’s a “painting” about a painting in which Before and After become a Transparent Now. Arrival and Departure are unified. Selected screenings: Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, 2006; Split Festival of New Film, Croatia, 2006; Video Ex, Zurich, 2006; Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec, QC, 2005
SSHTOORRTY
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“Plethora” is a documentary about stuff. Several individuals and professionals from psychologists to sociologists discuss the reasons why people obtain, collect , store, hoard and creat attachments to things. The movie examines the personal storage industry, consumerism, compartmentalization of private lives and containment of belongings from the past and for the future.
Plethora
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Once in a while, a vision comes a moving painting, an extension of the eye that sees… the body that feels wide awake from what might have been the actuality of REM, a rollercoaster of emotions. Walking through a life of words association with images, mass production of ideas no connection with sensation, just an unnatural conversion of feeling a loss of identity a sense of self through words in these frames are the essence of my sensation carefully nurtured and felt over and over again out of these frames these frames and you. These sensations are what are common between us, take them with you, use them when you like. Tell me a riddle. Sound by CCMC
Condensation of Sensation
