“Shelter” is a multi-layered experimental film that cleverly weaves archival social commentary and recent political activism in a playful analysis of our culture’s misplaced priorities. The film blends a variety of appropriated material – including a homeless demonstration during the gala premiere of an Atom Egoyan film at the Toronto Film Festival – with archival footage of circuses, westerns, and Pierre Burton discussing the pros and cons of building a bomb shelter. “Shelter” also celebrates the inherent qualities of the film medium, qualities that have quickly become marginalized through the current obsession with digital technology.
Filter Films
-
“Disappeared” is a visually stunning reflection on the seemingly ordinary moments that distinguish a man’s life. The sharp reality of present day scenes in the film build to a climax and are interspersed with montage sequences which express the dreamlike quality and memory. The accompanying lyrical narration, spoken by Kate Fischer, provides a continuous time element that unites the images.
Disappeared
-
Something has always been missing in Robert’s life and he is determined to find out the truth. Risking his relationship with his adoptive parents and family, he sets forth to find his biological heritage. If he is successful this will not be the end of his journey, but the beginning.
Missing Piece, The
-
Mixing live-action with illustration, “23” tells the story of one girl’s discovery that her 23rd birthday means more than she thinks. Andrea, a frustrated and cynical woman, makes her way to an undisclosed location. Following her journey we begin to learn how one’s person life is unknowingly connected and interwined with the lives of others – that randomness is nothing more than a pattern of a deeply imbedded complexity of order, an order so complex it is not immediately discernible or obvious. Inside an industrial building turned loft, Andrea steps into an elevator for an encounter that will change the course of her life. Trapped with three curious strangers, Andrea is introduced to the 23 enigma, the phenomena of random harmonization, and learns that not everything is as it seems. She is slowly forced to confront her own limited view of the world- how it works and what it means. Co-producer: Jennifer Gerlach
23
-
False Creek was named when industrialists developing the waterway in Vancouver discovered that the creek was actually an inlet.
False Creek
-
“A Way Out” is a documentary about breaking the cycle of poverty in Canadian’s oldest and largest “ghetto,” Regent Park. In addition to talking about what it is like to grow up poor in North America, it explores the reasons behind one person finding a way out and others remaining. As a former resident of a low-income community, Christene Browne went back to find out what had happened to some of her old friends. Formal and impromptu interviews are conducted and the community is revealed through footage and stills. A young man who currently lives in the community is also followed and interviewed. Through in-depth interviews with three people who made it out (Tony Lewis- Manger at Toronto Hydro, Lorie Stubbs – Artist/ Entrepreneur, Clement Virgo- Filmmaker ) we get an insightful look into the minds of people growing up in poverty. They share their hopes, dreams, anguish and fears with us. The community as an additional main character is revealed through everyday footage, landscape shots and still photographs.
Way Out, A
-
“Cleveland in My Dreams” is the story of a man haunted by a recurring dream who discovers a simple yet bizarre solution to his problem.
Cleveland in My Dreams
-
“Once” is a film about language, loss, and the construction of memory through language. Through voiceovers and fragmented footage, the characters in “Once” tell how they have come to study language in an attempt to relocate themselves at particular junctures in their lives. They describe their desire to learn Yiddish, a language they have speculative connections to or memories of. Their distance from the language and its intrinsic power to link them to an identity seems to increase their appetites for this language lost. Yiddish, it appears, while providing the elements of language, also represents a loss for, and only draws them further from, notions of home. Using architectural footage to evoke the structural elements of language, the buildings also represent places we have all inhabited both in our imaginations and in our daily lives. Both the images and the words impress us at once as magical and defining yet melancholic. Echoed in the images with footage that at moments appear to be akin to aged home movies, and at other times contemporary or archival. “Once” functions visually and verbally to suggest both language and home are ephemeral. “Once” is a film that places language at the centre of images, at times allowing the spoken word to dominate while we are suffused with metaphoric imagery.
Once
-
This film was conceived about 10 years ago when I heard Norman O. Brown define “Tragedy” as “goat-song” (or as Webster has it: “Greek tragoidia fr. tragos goat aiedein to sing; prob. fr. the satyrs represented by the original chorus”). I disagree with the last part of the Webster explanation and tend to think that the quality of sound of goats crying did prompt the Greeks to choose this term for their drama. In any case, the film “Tragoedia” is also ironic (thus, perhaps the Latin of its title) as often is goat “lamentation”; and finally I should quote this from O.E.D.: “As to the reason of the name many theories have been offered, some even disputing the connexion with ‘goat.’” (SB)
Tragoedia
