Until 1929, Canadian women were told that they couldn’t be senators. Our Constitution, the British North American Act, (BNA) said that only qualified “persons” could be appointed. The government of the day understood that to mean men only. So, in 1927, five Albertan women challenged this definition of “persons” in court. On October 18, 1929, the British Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal in Canada, ruled that the word “persons” could include both men and women. With this new historical interpretation, women won the right to be eligible for the Canadian senate.
Filter Films
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The film shows three levels of reality during the ordinary event of arising in the morning: physical reality – the senses and moods felt by the sleeper; psychological reality – the sleeper’s dreams, fantasies, and memories; and the reality of the sleeper’s surroundings. “Nothing Happened This Morning” attempts to make these levels of reality meaningful in themselves, without the necessity of the usual “dramatic action” which constitutes the content of most films.
Nothing Happened This Morning
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It’s the Ringling Brothers – but really it’s the circus of my childhood, with all the phantastic things going on, and colours, and mystery, and the exotic, and dreams and amazement. (JM)
Notes on the Circus
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“Shot in northern Alberta, where the artist grew up, the film consists of ten long-take shots of various lengths divided by black leader bearing a number for each successive shot… ‘notes in origin’ realizes the subtle lyricism that appears in the last image of its predecessor. Here Epp intimates a mysteriously shared and personal complicity of artist and viewer without, however, abandoning that purity and extraordinary elegance that mark Epp as one of the most accomplished of film artist.” – Bart Testa, Art Gallery of Ontario catalogue What I like in film is precision, slightness, economy of means, delight, inference and a kind of motion that can be followed but not tagged and makes seeing intelligent. (EE)
notes in origin
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Combining the lyrical tradition with more narrative forms, “Not Death…” weaves a web between different levels of psychic experience. Both visceral and conceptual, “Not Death…” challenges the viewer’s desire for simple narrative coherence, yielding a more complex and timely image of the human situation and film’s representation of it.
Not Death by Water Baptism by Fire
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“It’s no bag of pretzels!” Little does Max realize that it is a bag of pretzels, and much, much more. His planned trip to Georgian Bay to document a self-absorbed artist’s work is turned into a personal nightmare by the artist’s doting wife, indifferent children, and Mara, a young woman who has appeared out of an Egyptian dream to taunt him and to confront his neo-macho self-image. An idyllic drive into cottage country is transformed into a metaphorical journey through unfamiliar territory and cinematic absurdity. “Northbound Cairo” is a half-hour experimental comedy. Mara, a vivacious, young woman, has an inexplicable attraction for a cynical, older man, Max. Max is going to Georgian Bay for the weekend with his friend, Hirsh, Hirsh’s wife Sarah, and their two daughters, Rachel and Judy. Mara invites herself along. The character of Mara plays with the Egyptian goddess archetype. As the story progresses, Mara becomes more and more Egyptian in appearance. A simple flirtation becomes a threatening pursuit. The myth of the “seductive temptress” has always existed from Cleopatra to Marilyn Monroe. What does an ordinary man do when this fantasy is literally dropped into his lap? Music by Julie Masi (formerly Parachute Club) and The Palace at 4 A.M.
Northbound Cairo
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“Practically all of this fascinating road movie by a master framer of landscapes, stretching from the west to the east coast and back again, is not only subtitled but subtitled in handwritten text that moves constantly across the bottom of the frame. Though the procession of shots and the procession of text offer different versions of the same narrative – Benning’s cross-country trip by motorcycle, with many personal stops and one-night stands along the way – they’re rarely in sync or mutually enhancing; sometimes the text precedes the illustration by several minutes, and sometimes the picture comes well before the verbal description … “What finally emerges is an extremely evocative picture of what’s happened and is happening in this country from someone who would like to feel patriotic today but finds patriotism very difficult … Piling on layer after layer seems only natural to an alienated artist seeking to organize a surfeit of memories and experiences so that they speak with a single voice. To make this film Benning had to make the same trip twice. To watch it even once is to be distracted, but in an evocative and resonant manner – to be drawn away from Benning’s travels and alienations and reminded of one’s own.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, Oct. 2, 1992
North on Evers
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A film that examines the disposal of nuclear reactive waste in a story that seems both fantastic and, yet, all too real. The filmmaker exploits the animation genre to its fullest, using cut-out, live-action and photographic techniques to illustrate his satiric fable.
Atomic Dragons
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“Non-Zymase Pentathlon” makes use of the commercial imagery of post-war North America, culled from the pages of Life, Maclean’s, National Geographic, and their ilk, animating these pictures in absurd and arbitrary juxtapositions. Animals, people, consumer goods, military equipment, and other detritus float across different planes in an ambiguous film-space. The film is structured into five “events,” preceded by a brief introduction.
Non-Zymase Pentathlon
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A train passes by, a boy with a sparkler in his hand leads us into the world of night. A dark, haunting portrait of the urban landscape in a nocturnal fog. “An impressionistic portrait of Montreal in a nocturnal fog that is simultaneously beautiful and foreboding.” – John Dippong, Vancouver International Film Festival “A painterly vision of what happens in the city at night – beautiful and poetic.” – Stuart Poyntz, Street-Level Film Festival
Nocturne
