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  • Pearl’s Diner

    A beautifully rendered all-night roadside diner – complete with shiny chrome surfaces, jukebox, and local regulars – is the setting for this quietly moving story, seen through the eyes of the waitress, Pearl. Though trying to remain uninvolved, Pearl cannot help secretly imagining and speculating about the private lives of two of her customers. The question becomes: Should she act on those speculations? The animated images are composed of cutouts, collage and drawings.

    Pearl’s Diner

  • Pearl Mad

    Fantasy is her only refuge as Mae spends the last day of her life at the Gothic Insemination Laboratory, where she works and struggles with her role as a “passive collaborator.” An exoticised portrait of a WASP hunted by Bees. In a private allegory for despair, the protagonist, Mae, unfolds a personal mythology of sex and honey in Pearl and Glitter. Vowing never to return, Mae embarks on an absurd Suicide-Quest with the “good seeds” of man!

    Pearl Mad

  • Paul Horn in China

    The famous Canadian jazz flautist visits China with a tour group and finds himself on stage before an audience of five thousand. This remarkable trip, full of both Chinese music and the unmistakable melodies of Paul Horn, is captured on film by the filmmakers who travelled with him.

    Paul Horn in China

  • Patriotism 2

    In a way a portrait of Dave Shackman with the American flag. The ending is a stop-motion animation of a set table with food moving and swirling and finally gathering together in a ball. Looking back at the film, the animation sequence seems to foreshadow Dave Shackman’s early death. He died shortly after the film was made.

    Patriotism 2

  • Ay Que Pelos!

    “Ay Que Pelos!” is a hand-processed experimental film about anxiety disorders and panic attack syndrome. This bilingual film (interweaving English and Spanish) incorporates personal experiences, family history, case studies and medical texts, and uses these to examine the perception and (mis)understanding of the disease. The film is visually structured to reflect and invoke the experience of panic attack.

    Ay Que Pelos!

  • Patriotism 1

    Wieland’s kinetic romp casts David Shackman as an overexposed sleeper dogged by a patriotic march of tube steaks that finally refigures him as our most familiar icon of freedom. This pixillated short about hot dogs is the latest of Wieland’s early film works to be restored to circulation.

    Patriotism 1

  • PATH

    Employing a simple three-part structure, “PATH” is about personal experience and the interpretation of that experience. Both humorous and serious, the film is a cross-Toronto exploration, expansively taking in a wide variety of people, events and situations. In creating a dynamic web of associations, “PATH” invites participation in the act of perception. The film’s structure works like this: Davis is filmed connecting dots on a street map; next she walks that distance on the street, filming as she goes; then she recalls and interprets what she has seen in memory sequences. The street sequences have a variety of different rhythms and are filled with surprises. She films a marathon race and a disarmament rally, walks along the route of the Santa Claus parade, witnesses a skirmish in which the police intervene, chases a little girl through a greenhouse, attends a scarecrow festival and runs through a cemetery, to mention but a few. The memory sequences in “PATH” starts out being rather representational, but as the film unfolds become looser and more abstract: crude miniature drawings with magic marker give way to Davis’ performance of gestures later on. “PATH” makes itself up as it goes along, so is very much about the process of making art. “PATH” is diaristic in nature, shot chronologically over a two-year period through the changing seasons, and deals with personal history and experience through memory and association. Sound by Bill Grove. “PATH,” shot from 1982-1984, is also a very interesting historical record of a Toronto that ‘once was’.

    PATH

  • Pat’s Birthday

    A day in the country with Claes Oldenburg and the Ray Gun Theatre Players, including such classic items as the haunted house, a gas station, an ice cream stand, miniature golf, airplane noises, and balloons. Things happen after each other in this film only because there isn’t room for everything at once. After all, time is not supposed to move in one direction any more than it does in another.

    Pat’s Birthday

  • Past History

    Adventure, romance, politics and exile are themes in this unique combination of live action, archival photographs, and animation. Stories of people long ago and far away are brought to life, tracing a history of the effects of progress and development in Latin America on past and present generations.

    Past History

  • Passion: A Letter in 16mm

    “Passion: A Letter in 16mm” is the story of a woman with too much passion and too little time. Linda Griffiths portrays a woman struggling to balance her craving for professional excellence as a documentary filmmaker with her need for intimacy. The first film by the award-winning director of “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing.”

    Passion: A Letter in 16mm