“Opus 2” is an intimate and exciting film portrait of three very gifted young musicians – violinist Barry Shiffman, 15, pianist Yuval Fichman, 17, and cellist Wendy Morton, 18 – who form a chamber music trio under the guidance of noted teacher and music coach, Mildred Kenton. The film is a sequel to “Opus 1 No 1” and follows the three musicians on a rigourous journey through the prestigious Canadian Music Competitions, as they progress from the regional preliminaries to the gruelling national finals. Along the way, the film explores their very specialized world, offering insights into its many pressures, frustrations, and rewards.
Filter Films
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This film, in Sonata form, traces the development and final performance of a Beethoven chamber piece by a trio of very gifted young musicians.
Opus 1 No 1
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Of this film Hammer says, “It is about the fragility of both film and life as the sterility of a nursing home is memorized with veils and faded patterns of the past by the filmmaker imagining what her grandmother is seeing.” The film won first prize in several film festivals, was chosen for the 1987 Whitney Museum of Art Biennial and was premiered at the London International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1988.
Optic Nerve
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Two films on one reel. With Liz Reiner (OPHELIA) and Carla Liss (THE CAT LADY). On one level the films are portraits; on another level the first is inspired by reading about the painting of John Millais’ “Ophelia,” and “The Cat Lady” is an homage to the horror films of the filmmaker’s childhood movie going.
Ophelia and The Cat Lady
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“Oops!” is about the waste product of our impressive creations; what goes around comes around. “Oops!” uses drawn animation (markers, watercolours, pastels, inks), painting on glass, photocopy montage, cut-out animation, claymation, and pixillation.
Oops!
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“One Woman Waiting” evokes questions of subjectivity in the mirrored performance of two women. The single take, tableau composition forms the structure for catalytic change between the characters. The sensuous desert environment accentuates the poetic and ephemeral quality of this film. “Massarella uses the fixed camera shot in her enigmatic film of a symbolic encounter between two women in a beautifully shot desert location. Its cryptic form is a good example of how an idea can be treated most effectively by simple means, for instance in the use of the frame as a point of entry and exit for characters and as a perspectival space which uses foreground and interior for dramatic and emotional ends.” – Michael O’Pray, Independent Means, Canadian Experimental Films at the London Filmmaker’s Co-op Awards: Special Merit Award, Athens International Film Festival, 1985 Selected screenings: L.A. International Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA, 1985; San Francisco International Gay Film Festival, San Francisco, CA,1985; Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancouver, BC, 1985; Festival of Festivals, Toronto, ON, 1985; Toronto International Film Festival 10 x 10 Retrospective, Toronto, ON,1993; “Independent Means”, UK & European Film Tour, 1987; Cinematheque Quebecoise, Montreal, QC, 1989; San Francisco Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA 1990; National Film Board, John Spotton Cinema, Toronto, ON,1992
One Woman Waiting
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“…sixty one-minute shots with no camera movement. This tension between painterly and cinematic space is not only experienced as an intellectual contrast but is also felt as a dialectic between permanence and impermanence…” – Noel Carroll, Soho Weekly News
One Way Boogie Woogie
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“The one I liked best was ‘One Side, Left Corner’, which could be described equally well as a drama, documentary, or experimental film. If it can be said to have a plot it’s about a couple who drive out to a cottage in the country, then back to the city – but that really doesn’t matter. It’s about people failing to communicate! What counts is the experiments in filmmaking that were an integral part of what the film was saying. I liked Neal Livingston’s innovations. They worked. Experimental success.” – Catriona Talbot, The 4th Estate, Halifax, Nova Scotia
One Side, Left Corner
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“In Snow’s… ‘One Second in Montreal’ and ‘Dripping Water’ (made with Joyce Wieland) we are brought to consider the force of time stripped of spatial interest. A collection of snow scenes, all still photographs of potential sites for a monument in Montreal (thus distinctly not ‘artistic’ photographs) follow one another for 22 minutes. The film is aggressive, yet haunting. It is too at the edge, at the point where an image of an actuality provides a firmer ground for meditation than an abstract image or no image at all. “This particular film provides the subtlety of Snow’s genius, in his ability to locate a precise image of time without resorting to nostalgia or any iconic representation of the past or futurity. The shots are held longer and longer as we enter the middle of the film, and they shorten towards the end. After several viewings, ‘One Second in Montreal’ offers a subtle reading of times, distinctions in the duration of one very long hold and one just slightly shorter. The absence of internal movement denies the sense of temporal scale I have referred to in discussing ‘Back and Forth’; that absence magnifies the presence of time as a pure element in the film.” – P. Adams Sitney, Michael Snow: A Survey
One Second in Montreal
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Essential to the making of the film was an examination of still photographs. Stills were used as clues to the past. Clues that would bring order and meaning to significant memories. (PH) “Hoffman’s film is in the experimental film tradition of the personal diary, although in this case a beautifully paced mixture of family photographs and dramatic reconstruction interwoven into a narrative creates an objective distance. ‘On the Pond’ reveals skills of editing, sound and story telling which evoke in ten minutes a complex and emotional study of a family, its past and present, its young dreams and its affections. Unsentimental, evocative and perfectly pitched in its emotional resonance, it avoids all the pitfalls of personal narrative and is an excellent example of the short film’s power when handled with skill, sensitivity and integrity.” —Michael O’Pray, Independent Means, Canadian Experimental Films at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op
On the Pond
