“Personal Effects” is a film about Alison, a sixteen-year-old, who moves into an all-male rooming house. When she realizes that her recurring dream of someone appearing in her room at night is not, in fact, a dream, and that her underwear has been gradually disappearing, she undertakes to find out what’s going on. The unexpected results of her investigation reverberate and come full circle years later, challenging a simple explanation of the events in the house along gender lines and showing, in retrospect, the consequences of Alison’s impulse to forgive.
Filter Films
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Aleatory procedures are used to create movement at the points of fusion of the still images of which the film is constituted. For this reason, all movements within the film are completely reversible. This reversibility is extended into the film’s overall structure, as the film is formed into a loop – a closed container for the film’s chance elements. Such a structure, I believe, results in the complete elimination of all vestiges of drama from the film. Hence this film is a companion piece to “She Is Away.” The sounds of the film though determined in their occurrence by specific features of the image line, appear to form their own internal patterns, which phenomenally exist in counterpoint with the patterning of the images. (RBE)
Permutations and Combinations
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An homage to silent films: the clash of ambiguous innocence and unsophisticated villainy; seduction, revenge, jealousy, combat. The isolation and dramatization of emotions through the isolation (camera) and dramatization (editing) of gesture. I had long conceived of a film composed only of reaction shots in which all causality was erased. What would be left would be the resonant voluptuous suggestions of history and the human face. “Perils” is a first translation of these ideas. (AC) “Even more emphatic in its expose of movie methods is ‘Perils,’ which stages stylized fight scenes, with an occasional appearance by a camera on a tripod, in a rubble strewn lot. Child toys with conventions of structure – she likes to number her ‘acts’ and ends ‘Perils’ with the promise, ‘To be continued.’ Narrative logic is her playground…Child proclaims ‘My goal is to disarm my movies.’ That she does.” – Katherine Dieckmann, The Village Voice
Perils
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“Inspired by the poets of Rainer Maria Rilke, Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound…Elder’s latest film…is a visually lush collage,” and “an ironic attempt to construct a ‘Divine Comedy’ for modern times.” – Jim Shedden
Azure Serene
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“One of the year’s ten best films.” – J. Hoberman, Village Voice “There’s nothing even remotely nightmarish about ‘Perfumed Nightmare.’ It’s an enchanting and poignant experience, a totally original seriocomic creation with an infectious and exuberant energy. The film is a semi-autobiographical fable by a young Philippino named Kidlat Tahimik, about his awakening to, and reaction against, American cultural colonialism. Born in 1942 during the Occupation, Kidlat spent ‘the next 33 typhoon seasons in a cocoon of American dreams.’ This, then, is his perfumed nightmare: the lotus land of American technological promise. “In his primitive village he worships the heroism of the Machine, the sleek beauty of rockets, the efficiency of industrialism. He’s the president of his own Werner Van Braun fan club. He longs to visit Cape Canaveral, to experience those shimmering wonders he knows from the movies, from soldiers, from The Voice of America. This is a bizarre, hallucinatory movie full of dazzling images, and outlandish ideas. It’s both real and surreal, poetic and political, naive and wise, primitive and supremely accomplished. Tahimik is a master of metaphor. There’s the metaphor of the bridge that connects his past, present and future with the great world beyond. And there’s the metaphor of the film itself: produced single-handedly for $10,000, it is a triumph of cottage industry, a dazzling testament to the liberty of the imagination. With his very first film, Kidlat Tahimik has introduced a classic.” – Gene Youngblood, Los Angeles Filmex Program
Perfumed Nightmare
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In October of 1984, the highly acclaimed New York artist, Jack Smith, came to Toronto for a week long performance/Halloween ritual at the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre. This performance, true to Smithesque form, went by three different titles: “Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application,” “Brassieres of Uranus,” and “Impacted Croissants From Outer Space.” Accompanied by the music of Yma Sumac, this short piece remains the last film documentation of this historic event.
Performance by Jack Smith, A
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Shot in the spring of 1992 in St. Petersberg and Moscow, “Perestroyka” is a collage of conversations with Russian people, mostly artists, about life in Russia and about their hopes and fears for the future of their country. The position of artists and filmmakers in contemporary Russian society, the position of women in the new Russia, problems of unemployment, the politics of sexuality, and the erosion of traditional values are debated and discussed. Appearing in the tape are (in order of appearance): Sergey Letou Jazz Band, Vladik Mamyshev Monroe (performance artist), Bella Matveeva (painter), Alexandr Sakurov (film director), Liubov Polga (unemployed), Victor Tuzou (painter), Sonja Alexandro (chambermaid), Alexandr Alexandrov (composer), Georgieva Ivanova Veseuna (teacher), Michail Gurevich (film critic), Nicolai Izavolov (film historian), Valentina Gozbacheuchajo (film writer), Vand aleria Balandina (professor of Medicine (retired).
Perestroyka
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A lyrical and gentle protrait of a traditional Saskatchewan Hutterite community. Luminous slow motion images of this dignified people performing their daily chores are accompanied by a soundtrack of Hutterite songs and prayers. They can be found in scattered retreats across the grasslands of our three prairie provinces and five American states. Study guide available.
People in Black, The
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Less is more, and it’s humorously proven as people are told to “Stand on the X” while the camera records them. Although they’re asked to do nothing, of course they do everything but. Personalities are revealed through a minimalist format.
People Have Their Strife Now and Then
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Filmed in Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow’s loft in New York, the film covers a day of friends visiting, writing and drawing from noon of one day to dawn the next day. The soundtrack was done by Paul Bley. The 16mm film is a blow-up of grainy 8mm stock.
Peggy’s Blue Skylight
