A woman with a tortured past is triggered to take an unexpected walk down memory lane, she finds herself face-to- face with her inner child. Giving her a chance to make peace with her past. Does she find a way to celebrate darkness or does she become engulfed forever by it? In 2015, Jaene turned 40. This lead her to become introspective about her unusual life history. From a childhood of severe abuse, neglect, psychiatric institutionalization and being in care, she grew to become a street involved sex worker by 20. She met Elder, Isaac Day from Serpent River First Nations, in the early 2000’s. Through his teachings and ceremonies at Thunder Mountain, Jaene was able to turn her life around. This film is a narrative driven experimental self portrait of that journey. This project was made possible by the LIFT/ImagineNATIVE 16 mm Film Mentorship and premiered at the ImagineNATIVE film + media arts festival in 2015.
Filter Films
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Blair Maddox has been projecting IMAX films at the Space & Science Centre in Edmonton, Canada for almost 30 years. ‘Blair’s Last Day’ documents his last day on the job before the IMAX theatre switches to a digital projection system, leaving Blair unemployed after projecting over 30,000 films.
Blair’s Last Day
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Four years ago I began working on what was supposed to be a documentary about living with depression. In the end, if there is anything harder than having a conversation about depression, it is making a film about it. After numerous shoots, interviews, restarts, and stages of abandonment, I created this piece. The film is an attempt at translating the emotional state of depression, as I experience it. Filmed almost entirely on the Phantom slow motion camera at 1500 frames per second, 100 Attempts To Make a Film About Depression represents an ongoing struggle to be open about coping with depression, something that affects far more people than we would like to admit.
One Hundred Attempts to Make a Film About Depression
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The interior of the earth became a refuge from the threat that moved closer and closer to the island. The volcanic tubes served as communication vessels between time and space. This was where they experimented their resistance.
Burning Mountains That Spew Flame (Montañas ardientes que vomitan fuego)
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Activist Karen Topakian has been arrested dozens of times for using nonviolent civil disobedience to protest nuclear proliferation, human rights abuses, environmental issues, and war. Most recently, Karen was arrested along with six other Greenpeace activists after unfurling a 70-foot “RESIST” banner from a crane near the White House. What drives her to repeatedly put her body on the line? In turn lighthearted and moving, Karen’s story speaks to the need for Americans, now more than ever, to exercise this important First Amendment right. Following her first arrest in 1982, Karen began working at Greenpeace as a nuclear disarmament campaigner in 1987. For 16 years, she served as the executive director of the Agape Foundation-Fund for Nonviolent Social Change that awarded grants, loans, and fiscal sponsorship totaling $1.1 million dollars annually to California-based grassroots nonviolent social change organizations. In 2010, Karen became chair of the board of Greenpeace, Inc.
Arrested (Again)
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“Making use of a dizzying array of anti-gay protest footage captured and posted on the internet, Mead’s protagonist bears witness to the fractures, shifts and resistances that have brought us to this time in LGBTQ history.” (in/future 2016)
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A documentary that presents a love for music as seen through the eyes and hearts of two young musicians: Murray LaFoy, a nineteen-year-old jazz bassist and Erika Raum, a seventeen-year-old classical violinist. The film captures each one’s unique lifestyle and shows how music touches their lives day-to-day. By melding the jazz and classical genres in a final piece composed by the duo, we discover their worlds and appreciate the love of making music that they share.
Feeling Is Musical, The
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Erratic flashes of light spark across a flickering expanse of Lake Ontario. The image itself can’t be contained as light and debris spill outside the frame. The random alchemy of hand-processing techniques creates a landscape that transcends the observable, edging into the sublime. The ninth work in an ongoing series of poetic landscape films. “Gibraltar Point (transformed)” was created during a residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island. Shot on black and white 16mm film, hand-processed, then transferred digitally with an ambient sound design by Michelle Irving. Selected screenings: Festival International du Film sur l’Art (Montreal, QC, 2017); Antimatter Media Art (Victoria, BC, 2017);) Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image (Johnson City, NY, 2017); Festival Signes de Nuit (Paris, France, 2017)
Gibraltar Point (transformed)
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Noam, a young Israeli transgender, is nervous and excited to meet his childhood friend Natan after many years. Louise, a free spirited mom, in whose house Noam has been staying for the last six months, decides to throw a party at her place when her kid leaves for the weekend. Noam invites Natan to the party but things get messy when Noam’s tender attempts to reconnect with his friend are jeopardized by Louise’ inappropriate behavior.
The Friend from Tel Aviv
