“Filmed in the shadow of AIDS, ‘Panic Bodies’ is Hoolboom’s testament to the permanent impermanence of the flesh. The film’s six parts show the range of Hoolboom’s engagement with mortality, from rage to reverie … Whether he’s remixing ‘Terminator 2’ or concocting a female paradise, Hoolboom finds a balance between razor-sharp intellect and palpable love for images and sounds. To watch ‘Panic Bodies’ is to see what it means to live and die in the cinema.” – Cameron Bailey, NOW “Paul Rioeur said the toughest things humans have to face are that we die and not everyone loves us. ‘Panic Bodies’ catalogues earthly attachments – physical, material – as part of the spiritual process of acknowledging mortality, of preparing to die.” – Steve Reinke “‘Panic Bodies’ is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body’s betrayals: disease, decline and death. The film is a panorama of emotionally charged recollections of strange relatives and estranged siblings, staged recreations of fast-fading pasts and personal mythologies, and reflections on the anxious states created by the body’s fragile claims on time and space. It’s about being a stranger in your own skin. ‘Panic Bodies’ perfects the phantom quality of any good work about mourning, but it is not reducible to that. It is also enlivened by the intimacy that comes from having made a spectacle of personal secrets.” – Kathleen Pirrie Adams, Xtra “A meditation on the after-life that’s as powerful as anything in cinema… one of the truly defining movies in Canadian filmmaking history.” – Peter Godard, The Toronto Star
Filter Films
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In his own words and music, Lightnin’ Hopkins reveals the inspiration for his blues. He sings, jives, ponders. He boogies at an outdoor barbecue and a black rodeo and takes you with him on a homecoming visit to his boyhood home of Centerville, Texas. Blank has captured Lightnin’s blues in their fullest, darkest power. The film reaches “past the impish bluesman himself into the Blues itself, into the red-clay Texas, into hard times, into blackness, into the senses… you begin to understand the reasons why black Texas people might be in love with this land and angry at poverty” (Carmen Moore, The Village Voice). “The blues is just a funny feelin’, yet people call it a mighty bad disease.” – Lightnin’ Hopkins
Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins
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A sequel to “Primiti Too Taa” which playfully animates the original film in different film frame sizes (Super 8, 16mm and 35mm).
Two Taa Too
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An animated film of sweeping romance and inevitable tragedy – this is the story of Sarah, a young Jewish girl in Russia. A wistful peasant worker on a landowner’s farm harbours dreams of immigrating to the new land, to Canada. The one sad note for Sarah is that the realization of this dream necessitates a separation from her beloved cow, Brindle. Will she be brave enough to lead her new life alone? A richly funny film, “Sarah’s Dream” utilizes a plasticine cast to tell its extraordinary story.
Sarah’s Dream
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The film “Primiti Too Taa” is a playful sound poem, where the text jumps to life through animated typing on paper. Visually the film is a concrete poem in motion: choreography. Aurally the film is a sound poem with a printed text: typography. Constructivist poetry meets literal choreography. Primitive sounds meet their typed representation. The film is based on a 45-minute sound poem “Ur-sonate (Sonata for Primitive Sounds)” by Kurt Schwitters. The film is larva in memory of Kurt Schwitters (Artist Poet 1887-1948), under the influence of Norman McLaren.
Primiti Too Taa
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ASL is not English: it has a syntax of its own. Remaining true to e.e. cummings’ vision, the poem was transliterated metaphorically into the original syntax of the ASL rather than the SEE (Signed Exact English) to express the poet’s linguistic play in words. The poetic hand movements of the ASL/Art-Sign is to emphasize the dexterous quality of cummings’ perspective, to innovate a different kind of visual interpretation, best suitable for an avant-garde poem. This film, based on e.e. cummings’ poem, presents a penetrating, political-linguistic expression of humanity in a twisting, intertwining multi-choreographed collaboration of the several artists in Art-Sign, cinematography, music, dance. The improvisatory aspects of jazz – the complex strands of interweaving tonalities tuning and dividing up the octaves – are expressed throughout the ASL phrases of cummings’ poem, some of which are of distorted fragments; others, of unified superimpositions of impulsive rhythms – portrayed sounds of humanity.
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
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“Innocent Vision” is a documentary about the world from the viewpoint of children through their personal photographic interpretations.
Innocent Vision
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This film explores the multitude of effects that can be achieved using nothing more than a photocopy machine.
5 Cents a Copy
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When David tells Catherine he’s breaking up with her because he doesn’t find her that attractive, she is devastated. When her best friend hears what David has said, she convinces Catherine to get revenge – but who’s “doing” who here? Things aren’t always as they seem when it comes to affairs of the heart – especially in the 90s.
Cowgirl’s Revenge, A
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“‘Blue Movie’ was made for the international Dome Show where it was projected down onto the muslin surface of David Rimmer’s geodesic dome. The audience lay on the floor looking up at it, the inside of each eye finishing the globe.” – Gerry Gilbert, B. C. Monthly Magazine, June, 1972
Blue Movie
