This film playfully engages with the act of seeing and with every other sense that the phrase might prompt. “sea-ing” takes the viewer through the world of representations (magazine articles, texts and photographs on the topic of aquatic beings, the “sea”) to the world of presentations, where the actual beings (the starfish) light up our eyes and thus present themselves to our senses in their immediacy. The visual rhythms echo the experience of submerging under water: the initial shock to the sensory system, the rush of bodily reactions to the new environment, and then the subsequent calmness and engagement with the new environment. “sea-ing” is a prelude to a future series of photogram films under the same title and theme. It was originally commissioned as a trailer for the Images Festival 2004 in Toronto, Canada.
Filter Films
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Set out in unknown and sinister territory, a man undertakes several adventures, fighting his enemies and alter-egos of his own personality. A promising sexual act is interrupted by eye surgery and the promise of introducing the man to his real self.
Encounter in Space
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“Snack Pack” plays with the tensions between the director’s Mexican and Canadian identities.
Snack Pack
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Napoleon loves a good tyrant. He might get the details wrong and misrepresent history, but he always tells a good story. In this episode, George Bush stages a successful attack on the Inuits. This finger puppet show comes from the puppet shop of Jamie Shannon and the hands and fingers of many good people. Selected screenings: Canadian Film Centre Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005; Rehab Parkdale Film Festival, Toronto, ON, 2005
Napoleon’s History of the World
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Creating an intricate visual map, photograms provide an opportunity to travel through the space of a spider’s web.
following the line of the web
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Shards of film fly off the screen while the music of Fats Waller plays on! In this short abstract film, coloured ink and small pieces of film stock are heaped directly on the film’s surface. “This film was made in the weeks preceding the birth of my first child. It was my intention to create a fast-moving, colourful style that a very young child could respond to. I’ll see in the years that follow if I was right or not,” Steven Woloshen.
Snip
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Made in collaboration with Alwin Nikolais. Images of dancers in the Nikolais Dance Theatre Company are cinematically choreographed using a wide variety of film techniques from slow motion to pixillation. In the course of the film they pass through a series of transformations.
Chrysalis
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Nice Karl-Heinz and his good-looking lover David live together in Karl-Heinz’ apartment. David is many things but faithful, which he at one point promised to be, is a thing of the past. One day Karl-Heinz surprises David in the middle of an orgy. Frantic with anger, he plans his shrewd revenge. He cooks an elaborate dinner which David misunderstands as a conciliatory gesture, until Karl-Heinz’ clever plan unfolds…
Abendmahl (Last Supper)
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“INFUNDE LUMEN CORDIBUS was made using principles derived from Stephen Wolfram’s work on cellular automata (‘A New Kind of Science’) to determine the content and colour of the shots, their duration, and the time of their appearance: the palette of effects, and their rhythmical development… is entirely the result of computational processes that model natural events. John Cage instructed us that art should imitate nature in its manner of operation; I have tried to take the lesson. The music was composed, using related principles, by Colin Clark with the assistance of Josh Thorpe” (R. Bruce Elder). The film’s title translates as “Flood my heart with light” and is best known from a hymn, ascribed to St. Ambrose, used for Sunday Vespers.
Infunde Lumen Cordibus
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Grady Mutzel works nine-to-five, five days a week, and gets the same bus home every day. But he doesn’t take his work home with him. Instead, Grady develops an affection for bears which becomes his obsession. He organizes candy treats in order to feed the bears at the zoo, because “we all need a treat every once in a while.”
Man Who Loved the Bears, The
