A playful look at sibling rivalry orchestrated with the rhythmical beat of the chants kids sing in schoolyards and at home. The fears, latent jealousy, and even cautious approval of little brother are warm and funny. Achieved with simple animation techniques, the film enhances its subject with childlike playfulness.
Filter Films
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This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems preferable for starts. I think each film’s integrity of rhythm would allow viewing at a greater variety of speeds, were there the 16mm projectors to allow that exercise. So far as I can tell, they defy verbal interpretation (even more than their Roman equivalents) and would, thus, seem to be closer to Music than any previous work given me to do; but if that be true, it is (as composer James Tenney put it to me) that they relate to that relatively small area of musical composition which resists Song and Dance and exists more purely in terms of Sound Events in Time/Space. Finally, then, the inspiration of all those modern (and a few ancient) composers I’ve most loved since my teens overwhelms the easier, and comfortably lovely, habits of jig and do-re-mi AND creates a visual correlative OF music’s eventuality – i.e. each Arabic is formed by the intrinsic grammar of the most inner (perhaps pre-natal) structure of thought itself.
Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 13
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“This film is about ‘nothing.’ Hints of dramatic ‘loss’ are imaged throughout, but the primary effect of the film is to give, through fleeting and ephemeral visions, a sense of something which almost exists but unhappily doesn’t.” – Marilyn Jull
Absence
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Velcrow Ripper defines his film, which took four years to make, as “an exploration of a fool’s subjective vision as it becomes warped by society, a gradual transition from dream to nightmare… a cardboard parody, blatantly staged and simplistic.”
I’m Happy, You’re Happy, We’re All Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy
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“I Will Not Think about Death Anymore” is a dramatic film about a Jewish lesbian who is obsessed with worries about dying following the death of a friend to AIDS. The fears triggered by this event bring on anxiety attacks common to women at the beginning of a healing process from sexual abuse. The story revolves around an internal adventure and fantasy, where Death becomes a butch dyke in the supermarket. The themes of healing, sexual abuse, dying, and panic attacks intertwine with Jewish identity, and the reclaiming of Jewish ritual for gay and lesbian audiences.
I Will Not Think about Death Anymore
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This film is entirely hand-painted and is composed of such an evolution of variably coloured shapes that their inter-action with each other should constitute a purely visual “self evident” (as prompted by the title): everything beyond the title is as far removed from language as I could possibly make it: and thus it is, to me, practically impossible to describe. Each frame is printed twice, so that its effective speed (24 fps) is 12 frames per second. A variety of organic and crystalline painted shapes (painted on clear leader, thus as if brilliantly back-lit in a blazing space of light) are interspersed with very dark (black leader) passages as if etched with scratches of light and strained radiances: the juxtaposition of these two contrasting qualities of painted and scraped film are “interwoven,” sometimes with vine-, or vein-, like irregular lines in black or alternately, scratched-etched white. There are also some straight, multi-coloured, bars which move diagonally from one side of the film frame to the other. All these “themes” finally give way to clear thick gelantinous effects which resolve themselves in a long passage of beseemingly-struggling hieroglyphic white shapes in a black field, ending on a brief spate of variable colouration. The film is the first part of “The Hand-Painted Trilogy.” Dedicated to Phil Solomon. (SB)
I Take These Truths
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Inspired by natural rhythms and daily thoughts. A playful poetic gesture of images and audio.
I Smiled Too
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“I Object” is a film which explores images of women. It focuses on two women students who are confronted with the contradictions of their dual role as model and photographer. The film raises questions about the motivations for nude modelling, how women become objects, and how women deal with sexual stereotypes in educational institutions.
I Object
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“I Need a Man like You” is funny as it is provocative, and delivers a colourful and zany venue of Toronto’s finest Queen Street performers. Comedian Sheila Gostick is brilliant in her political satire and wildly hilarious as the dancing goddess. Performance artists the Clichettes bring a new awareness to rock culture through their original and unforgettable choreography to some of the great hits of the sixties. Helen Porter, as the killer Dyke in leather, shares a vision of the erotic that is tender, warm, and funny. The film is a timely and playful lampooning of some of the most resistant sex stereotypes around today.
I Need a Man Like You
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A gender-warped tale of Marvette (played by Tracy Wright), a recently deceased heroin addict, who returns to this world as a gorgeous gay sailor who just wants to cruise the boys. A who’s who of local luminaries lend a hand in this funky, funny, experimental ode to mixing it up and making it work, no matter what the circumstances.
I Am the Camera Dying
