“object/loss” addresses themes of physical loss, memory, sexual identity and the didactic divides that shape the fabric of our social existence. Ghostly images collide and fragment as traces of memory resurface and disappear. The title refers to the work of Julia Kristeva on the melancholy/depressive position which occurs through object loss, and the contingent aggression towards the lost object. At the same time the film attempts to examine the consumption of the male figure and its objectification from a feminine heterosexual position.
Filter Films
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“Cityscape” is an impressionistic documentary film intended to create a social awareness of the need to design safer cities and urban environments for women.
Cityscape
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A young gay man in a tiny Toronto apartment experiences a nervous breakdown, causing him to obsessively arrange and re-arrange his large knick-knack collection. Based on a true story, “Rx” is a bittersweet, funny chronicle of a mind turned frantic by fear, worry and novelty paperweights.
Rx
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Using his own lumpy body as a template, artist RM Vaughan explores differing reactions by various audiences to the blunt reality of having a non-commodifiable body in the age of supermodels. Alternately scathing and self-deprecating, “Hate” dishes out (and takes) some unhappy truths about “beauty” and art.
Hate
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After the death of his mentally ill father, artist RM Vaughan attempts to come to terms with the event by reconstructing his father’s emotional responses to the maudlin 70’s television program “Little House on the Prairie.” A blackly humourous meditation on death and grief, punctuated by crying scenes from the famously teary, famously cheesy television classic.
Walnut Grove, mon amour
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“Good Stuff” is a dark comedy about an alienated, gothic private school girl who discovers that she has a terminal illness. The film finds irony and humour in dealing with the cards fate has dealt you. Awards: Best Short Film, Chicago International Film Festival; Bronze Award, Houston WorldFest
Good Stuff
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“Triple Booked” is an innovative combination of three genres of dance: flamenco, modern and break dancing. One by one, and then intercut so they seem to be alternately in concert and in competition with one another, these three dancers interpret a remixed piece of music that starts with flamenco, flirts with pop and buzzes into a club beat.
Triple Booked
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“The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…” – W. Wordsworth Our busy comings-and-goings, on the move, working at life are pictured. Layers of images and scratched emulsion make viewing through the depths an effort, but glimpses of other states suggest we can surface. “A beautiful film. A new way with colour. But more and more epiphanic.” – Barbara Godard
surfacing
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Freeshow Seymour is the collaborative effort of Allyson Mitchell and Christina Zeidler, who came together to explore their mutual crush on film-craft. Individually, they have been making work since 1994. In 2003 they both attended the Big Rock Candy Mountain residency at The Banff Centre, where they joined forces to highlight the work they are doing on candy and consumption and to explore their love of film. The basis of Freeshow Seymour is process. The two artists meet and see what evolves out of being together – whether it is films, music, crafts, performance or just thrift-store shopping. Their artworks blend familiar pop-culture and weirdo fringe identities to explore emotionally dangerous territory; the result is a bittersweet ride through joy and tragedy. Collectively, Freeshow Seymour is a talisman against anxieties which marks the benefit of jumping off the precipice: exploding art practices and art fears. The Freeshow Seymour Compilation contains: Freeshow Seymour Trailer (2003) 0:30 min. 16mm Glitter (2003) C. Zeidler & A. Mitchell, 0:05 min.16mm Sssssss (2002) C. Zeidler , 3 min. 16mm Pink Eyed Pet (2002) A. Mitchell & L. Vaughn, 3 min. Super 8/Video Come Here (2002) C. Zeidler, 1 min. Video Precious Little Tiny Love (2003) A. Mitchell, 3 min. Super 8/Video Traces (2002) C. Zeidler, 10 min. 16mm, colour If Anyone Should Happen To Get In My Way (2003) C. Zeidler & A. Mitchell, 3 min.16mm Sticker Lover (2003) A. Mitchell, 0:15 min.16mm Machine Guts (2003) C. Zeidler, 3 min. Super 8 Cupcake (1996) A. Mitchell, 3 min. Super 8/Video Candy Kisses (2000) A. Mitchell, 3 min.16mm My Life in 5 Minutes (2001) A. Mitchell, 7 min. Video Bon Bon (2001) A. Mitchell & L. Vaughn, 3 min. 16mm Rabbit Face Painting (2003) C. Zeidler, 1 min. Video Kill Road (2003) C. Zeidler, 14 min.16mm
Freeshow Seymour Compilation
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This is a film made in Toronto, in memoriam, so to speak – a memory piece, a “piecing-together” of the experience of living there. The consciousness of the maker comes to sharply focused visual music – not to arrive at snapshots, as such, but rather to “sing” the city as remembered from daily living…complementary, then, to an earlier film, “Unconscious London Strata.”
City Streaming
