“Since 1973, the filmmaker had made pilgrimages to Queen’s Park in the heart of Toronto to film a certain tree. With this collection of footage he produced ‘Le Bois de Balzac’ – completed in 1981. The entire film literally ‘revolves’ around the tree which becomes transformed and imbued with character and meaning. At times the tree is a mythological being and at others, an object of meditation. At one point it resembles the Rodin sculpture of the writer Balzac. The space surrounding it expands through the soundtrack to distant places on the globe, and the single tree in the park becomes the touchstone for a journey of the imagination.” – Anna Gronau
Filter Films
-
Stan Brakhage is a legend, possibly the most important filmmaker of the avant-garde, and one of the greatest artists of our time. Since 1952, at the age of nineteen, Brakhage has created over 300 films, ranging from several seconds to several hours, constantly and consistently redefining the shape of film art. “Brakhage” explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendour of his films, his magical personal charm, his aesthetic fellow travellers, and the influence his work has had on generations of other creators. ‘“Excellent! A reverent, hagiographic, even mystical portrait of the canonical avant-gardist.” – Ed Halter, New York Press
Brakhage
-
In a seemingly placid country setting, a young woman is pursued, and ultimately consumed, by unseen desires.
Natural Selection
-
Get up, shower, shave, coffee, right? How about get up, jab finger, draw blood, give yourself a needle? Again and again … This film presents the daily routine of the film’s director, an insulin-dependent diabetic. The film records his morning regimen of blood sugar testing, needle preparation, and insulin injection, climaxing with a montage of a month’s worth of needles into various sites on his body. Afraid of needles? This won’t hurt a bit.
62 Injections
-
“A surreal dinner movie … not to be missed … goes beyond spaghetti, beyond goldfish, and yet again, beyond what some people may call good taste. Too strange to be successfully described on paper … the sets were neat-o, the acting perfect, and the total sound, dialogue and music was absolutely suited to the total ridiculousness.” – Elizabeth Weissman, The Link
Are You There? Are You Listening?
-
Set against the bleak landscape of Depression-era Eastern Ontario, this film tells the story of Joanna McVeigh and her struggle to endure a harsh and unforgiving life. Epileptic since childhood and past the age of marriage, Joanna lives alone on a run-down farm with Frank, her alcoholic father. Bound by a promise to her dying mother and haunted by a dark and shameful childhood secret, Joanna illuminates her loneliness with secret imaginings and the pleasure of her one great gift, the ability to set fires with her mind. Joanna’s desire to break free from the confines of her lonely existence leads her to forsake her promise and embark on a strange journey of self-discovery. The film is a subtly disquieting tale of guilt and redemption.
Fires of Joanna, The
-
The opening credits for “UTOPIA” read: Except for some additional ambience, the entire soundtrack of this film has been taken (without permission) from: Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Journal. A film by Richard Dindo, the images were found in the desert landscape from Death Valley south to, and crossing, the Mexican border. The text at the end of the film concludes: A sidewinder moving across the desert sand leaves in its wake an angled trail of J’s. A kangaroo rat ingesting seeds produces water by extracting hydrogen and oxygen from their carbohydrates and recombines the gases into H2O. Ridges in its nostrils trap the moisture it exhales. Waiting in stillness, the snake swallows the rat whole and immediately begins to absorb the water from its tissue. Hours later a circling roadrunner grabs the sidewinder behind the head and shakes it violently, breaking the snake’s back. The next day, with several inches of snake tail still protruding from its mouth, the roadrunner continues to slowly dissolve the other end, absorbing the water from the sidewinder – and the kangaroo rat. (James Benning, Fall 1998)
UTOPIA
-
“‘Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.’ These words, attributed to the Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk, are the final bit of text to appear in veteran filmmaker James Benning’s ‘Four Corners,’ which uses a specific geographical location to pose larger questions about the United States. Here, the geographic and wholly imaginary place Four Corners, that favorite tourist destination where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet, becomes a kind of theoretical ground zero, the site from which Benning can give voice to other, pointedly unofficial of spurious conspiracy (the history of the United States), but one in which each sound and each image hints at a story not yet fully told (the histories of the United States).” – Manohia Dargis, LA Weekly
Four Corners
-
Desire disorients and bodily swellings result. “A lovely concoction of hand-tinted and scratched film evoking a woman’s flight from concrete to nature – spurred on by a kiss.” – Gordon Bowness, Xtra!
Swell
-
Toronto, 1952. 18-year-old Derek undergoes painful aversion therapy designed to “cure” his homosexuality. After the quiet literal shock of his first session, he leaves the hospital, finding refuge beneath the artificial skies of a planetarium. Eventually, he flees Toronto altogether, heading back to his small-town home. His doctor quickly finds him and threatens to notify the police if Derek doesn’t return. So again, Derek escapes, this time to the Peterborough Exhibition (which has advertised their own planetarium), in the hope of recreating the wonder and transportation he felt earlier.
Stargaze
