This touching tribute to Appalachian culture profiles legendary, old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell. His unpretentious folk wisdom is interlaced with family scenes and reminiscences, plus plenty of old-time music.
Filter Films
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This brightly hued cine-poem is a walk through the natural world, its slowly gathered rounds of superimposition conjuring a season of renewal and re-awakening.
Spring
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“Spirit Matters” is a silent monologue on the simultaneous perception of space and time. The film was constructed without a camera by writing directly on clear celluloid and then “translated” by refilming the resulting strips on a light table so that they appear as “subtitles” beneath the original inscription. The film functions as both process and object – an interactive experiment in reading, writing, and seeing.
Spirit Matters
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A rich portrayal of the lives and music of the French-speaking Cajuns of Louisiana, featuring the Balfa Brothers, Marc Savoy and Nathan Abshire.
Spend It All
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This new release print version of “Speck” is relatively true to the original 1989 version. Over the years many attempts were made to remake the film into a new work. Gradually the filmmaker realized that the new experiments, although interesting, were too closely tied to the original work. A compromise was made so that the best of the new experiments were incorporated into this final print. Initially, the idea was to have three synchronized Super 8mm films printed in superimpositions to one strip of 16mm. Given the inherent possibilities and limitations of the process, the A-B-C- rolls tended to favour images with densities that would not add up to the point of washing out. Scenes of high spectral intesity – sun-drenched water crashing into rocks, filming directly into a projector lens, overexposed Kodachrome melted frame-by-frame – were exposed to favour the highlights. The result was a fairly balanced and fluid interplay of the superimposition layers. These initial experiments have been reworked many times over the years, incorporating travelling mattes and high-contrast manipulation.
Speck
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In an event designed specifically for the film, two of the most renowned young chefs working in Canada, Jamie Kennedy and Michael Stadtlander, come together to collaborate on a special meal for a surprise guest. As contemporaries who also happen to be old friends, the chefs complement each other’s distinct visions as they work side-by-side in the highly charged atmoshphere of a restaurant kitchen. In a subtle cherography of action and sensitivity, their work unfolds in the film like a performance, conjuring up a delightful visual treat. The chefs pepper the action with their own insights, shedding light on the reasons behind the specific approaches that have made them among the most sought-after cooks in the country. The approach to their cooking, it emerges, amounts to nothing less than an approach to life itself.
Special of the Day
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Using techniques from documentary, the avant-garde, and narrative films, a great deal of information about abortion is compressed into a short time. The film combines the interwoven multi-layered voices of women recounting their experiences with minimal images from one woman’s memory. Short but powerful.
Speakbody
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Named after the street on which he lives in Tappan, New York, “Sparkhill Ave” continues the autobiographical line of inquiry through family, friends, neighbours, community, and Americana that began with “T.Z. “(1979) and passed through “Trial Balloons” (1982), “Bang!” (1986), and “A Frog on the Swing” (1988). In addition to his usual improvisations on form, colour, and motion, Breer collages and animates photographs of street scenes, parades and seasonal variations in the landscape. Combined with an unusual-for-him continuously running synthesizer soundtrack, “Sparkill Ave” paints a portrait of a small town, a seemingly closed system that’s never the less informed by Country and national politics.
Sparkill Ave
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Scenes from old educational and propaganda films, cut up and arranged (deranged) in numerical patterns. Chance collisions occur with techniques based on William Burroughs’ writing experiments and John Cage’s music composition. The final section consists of 24 variations of 24 frames in one second of film; to watch all 6.2 X 10 (to the power of 23) possible permutations would take approximately 76 thousand-trillion years.
Spare Parts
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A timeless tale with a twist. Mother puts her child to bed, a witch and an artist make a deal and the moral of the story is … up to you. An exploration of stop-motion animation and composition combining human, wooden and feline actors.
Bedtime Story
