“‘Sweetblood’’s chief elements include a flurry of family photos, a collage of Italian immigrant voices and a bottle of red. Expertly made, this memoir is Steve Sanguedolce’s hymn to his family, and his own secret history of the seventies.” – Toronto Festival of Festivals “Perhaps the most evocative short film in the program is Steve Sanguedolce’s ‘Sweetblood,’ which examines the strained relationship between the filmmaker and his emotionally detached father. A collage of family photographs and cryptic subtitles fills the screen while the voices of his family and his personal thoughts are heard. An emotionally stirring film in which the pain of unresolved family issues washes over the viewer.” – Ingrid Randoja, NOW Magazine Awards: Second Prize, Big muddy Film Festival, Chicago, 1994; Honorable Mention, 32nd Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1994
Filter Films
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Inspired by remarks made by Freud, “Eros nowhere makes its intentions more clear than in the desire to make two things one” and by Nietzsche, “What must these people have suffered to have become this beautiful.” (RBE)
Sweet Love Remembered
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“Beshert” is a love story based on the Kabalah. The movie tells of a young man’s search for his real soulmate. “Beshert” is a universal tale that applies to every person in this world.
Beshert
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“Sami called and asked me to go north with him and make a film about where his great-grandfather, Robert Flaherty, had been in Fort George. I suggested we stop in Kapuskasing to see the place where my mother’s family first settled when they arrived from Europe. Two men, on the road AGAIN, sifting through past worlds where there is everywhere, dusty remnants of the ‘great white father.’ Colliding head on with the passing present we see him in us.” – Phil Hoffman Sound design: Randall Smith
Sweep
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Volumes have been written on “The Dying Swan,” the dramatic ballet solo first choreographed by Michel Fokine and made famous by Anna Pavlova. The dancer interprets the swan’s struggle for life in the face of the inevitable approach of death. In “The Swan,” as the dancer assumes the poses and movements of a swan, the animation dissolves in, transforming the human interpretation of the bird into an animated swan which continues the choreography of the now invisible dancer. The dance dissolves back in picking u,p the movement of the animation. This back-and-forth interplay continues throughout the film.
Swan, The
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“An energetic video exploring the theme of self-identification and the significance of sexual and racial labels.” – Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival, Toronto, 1995
Suspicious
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An interpretation of a state of suspension through visual effects, dance, movement and sound. It represents a “state” rather than a “journey.” Events occur within the film as might be seen in an abstract painting that is in motion.
Suspension
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“Surviving Memory” is a film about the role of loss in the formation of identity. It is a narrative intercut with documentary fragments of political actions, which connect the various characters to event through collective memory. Through autobiographical spoken texts, the narrator relays fragments of a relationship between two Jewish women. The fragmented texts speak of the relation between these women as well as recounting various past and contemporary historical events of fascist and neo-Nazi activity (and resistance), Lesbian/Gay rights, Pro-Choice and AIDS demonstrations. While these instances tell a personal/political story about loss, they are also meant to elucidate the complexity of the process of diasporic identification and the relation of memory to historical event.
Surviving Memory
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“The loveliest Rimmer film (and the cleverest Rimmer title) shows a river boat slowly steaming past the Houses of Parliament – so slowly that it seems not to be moving, and surrounded by such luminous mistiness that one critic is supposed to have thought he was looking at a Turner painting rather than at film footage. Gradually the surface of the film begins to wrinkle slightly, to spot, to show minor blemishes – in a sense to assert itself above and before the rich density it contains. The gesture is tentative and discreet, but it is also unsettling and liberating in ways that seem central to the gentle invocations of dissolution that are a basic feature of David Rimmer’s world.” – Roger Greenspun, New York Times “Temporally, each frame of the original shot is rendered as a brief pause between a continuing progression of dissolves… it is a chronology of events, normally occurring in real time, but seen in this film from an intensely magnified perspective.” – Al Razutis, Vancouver Art Gallery “The ultimate metaphysical movie…one of the really great constructivist films since Wavelength.” – Gene Youngblood, Arts Canada
Surfacing on the Thames
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“The influence of minimalist art (rather than the aesthetic of minimalist art) on the avant-garde cinema is very great. Most of the important young filmmakers, especially on the east coast, might be considered minimalists. Certainly Frampton’s Surface Tension is from that milieu. The film itself has three parts: a comic static shot emphasizing the passage of time; a fast motion tour through a city with fractured German commentary; and a slow seascape with fish floating mid-screen. In this last section, phrases translated from German commentary are printed over the image… The narrator’s voice belongs to Kaspar Koenig, as indeed also the text he extemporizes.” (P. Adams Sitney) Available for puchase only.
Surface Tension
