Form mutates through the elements, fluid into solid and back.
Filter Films
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“Everything’s for You” reflects the filmmaker’s relationship with his deceased father, a man who survived both the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. The film utilizes a combination of previously shot material (1974-78), family photographs, archival footage, printed footage, cell animation sequences (by Emily Hubley), and computer graphics to create a mosaic, a meditation on filial relationships. Dialogue is in both Yiddish and English. “… Ravett makes old snapshots flicker like candles in the wind. Archival footage of the Lodz ghetto appears in ethereal negative. The film is composed of dreamlike fragments and traces, accompanied by Ravett’s incantatory interrogation of these mute images.” – J. Hoberman, Premiere “Ravett’s ‘Everything’s for You’ is one of the most moving films I saw in 1989. In intimate psychological detail, the filmmaker examines a relationship full of regret and longing – a relationship in which intimacy failed. The possible causes of this failure are skirted, suggested, and examined through the construction and repetition of images taken from a diversity of sources and reproduced by a variety of methods. The film consists of images filmed and photographed, digitized, animated, and optically printed; texts spoken, written, and unvoiced; and sounds heard, imagined, and projected onto other sources. These elements form a cinematic structure on a foundation of found and fresh – archival and original – materials.” – Grahame Weinbren, Millennium Film Journal
Everything’s for You
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A conversation between a young banker with an older homeless man traverses a downtown meridian surrounded by commercial buildings, populated by homeless people at night. Drawing inspiration from Samuel Beckett and Dialogues of Plato, IN DIFFERENCE fuses Man with Myth and Metaphor to comment on the veneer and prejudices of contemporary society.
IN DIFFERENCE
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“Lunar Almanac initiates a journey through magnetic spheres with its staccato layering of single-frame, long exposures of a multiplied moon. Shot in 16mm Ektachrome and hand processed, the film’s artisanal touches are imbued with nocturnal mystery”. —Andréa Picard, TIFF Wavelengths, 2014 Image description: A series of images of the full moon in a grid of four filmstrips taken from the film Lunar Almanac. The moon is white or pale yellow against a black background, in some instances obscured by tree branches or clouds. One section is coloured deep orange-red.
Lunar Almanac
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A meditative journey through Expo 67, re-visiting a significant moment in Canadian history using manipulated imagery taken from educational and documentary films. Footage has been re-worked using tints, toners and photochemical techniques to create a vibrant collision of colours, textures and forms.
By The Time We Got To Expo
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“Everything Everywhere Again Alive” is a nature film with a difference. It is about a concept of nature which is communicated by a series of very simple images. These very simple images are used like building blocks of ideas to build a complex representation of nature as well as diaristic events taking place in the film. “Everything…” is an elaboration of two films by painters Jack Chambers (Circle) and Joyce Wieland (Solidarity) and in another sense, Michael Snow (La Region Centrale). “Everything…” is about space and the meaning of the infinite as it is used in Chinese painting. The shape of nature is like a circle, the circle can also represent space as in the mathematical symbol of zero which represents an empty space rather than a numerical quantity. The zero is a “mystic” bound between reason and imagination, the concrete and the abstract. Some film historians have traced the idea of cinema back to its prehistoric firelight shadow plays. Although conjecture, this is part of the rationale for using primitive poetry in place of the usual spoken narration. In view of the fact that “Everything…” also chronicles a practical attempt to get back to the purity of nature, this form of narration is the total expression of the experience as it was understood by the filmmaker.
Everything Everywhere Again Alive
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two super 8 camera rolls capturing the beth olem cemetery in detroit on the site of GM’s “Poletown” plant, only open 4 hours per year.
beth olem | house of the world
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you rub me the wrong way was created as part of SOUND + VISION TORONTO produced by Basement Arts. This project paired 5 local filmmakers with 5 local bands/musicians and 1 local neighborhood. I was asked to interpret and adapt a song by the potent forces behind post-punk band Pants & Tie in Toronto’s dynamic Kensington Market.
you rub me the wrong way
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A short lesbian art erotic film about a chance encounter between two women, complete strangers to each other, in the city of Belgrade. An impulsive attraction between them is driven by a strong sensual connection and the story of pursuit builds up quickly in one afternoon and enchanting night. Free of dialogue and with an original musical score, this short film can be likened to a fantasy or dream.
In Passing
