In this section, films are grouped under the name ofthe filmmaker. Titles are listed alphabetically under each filmmaker's name.
The Front Lawn
10:30 min. 1990
A haunting bass clarinet accompanies the sparse movements of Jorge Holguin and Lee Anne Smith in this poetic work completed posthumously for Michael McGarry.Through stylized contrasts in movement, costume, and interior and exterior settings, the film explores a tension between freedom and restraint, movement and immobility, suggesting ultimately, the struggle between life and death. It was inspired by a short play by Louis Arrabal called The Labyrinth.
Subject(s): Dance
In Black and White
10 min. b/w 1979
This work asks the viewer to re-examine the right of the police to harass adults because of their sexual preferences. A careful, precise film which raises the question in a reserved and understated style.
Subject(s): Gay, Human rights
The Wake
14 min. 1986
The sensations, moods, and passages of grief are explored in The Wake,which uses emotionally evocative landscapes and poetic text to extract a poignant beauty from the depths of human trauma.
Diminished
7 min. 1979
"A delicately structured non-verbal poem about loss, time, and memory, closerin style to Michael Snow or Hollis Frampton than to Alain Resnais. Faded images lap-dissolve against `small sounds' and enigmatic subtitles like voices from the past. A documentary of the heart." (Gene Youngblood) This film can be used in conjunction with Your Daughter Is Sleeping.
Awards: Honourable Mention, Northwest Film & Video Festival
Gathering
22 min. b/w 1975
A cinéma-vérité style attempts to capture the losses and the lost of a college party, as well as its imposed gaiety.
Give That Person There a Camera
3 min. 1977
Voice-over narration recounts a tired young worker's trip home, while the camera records the simple, passing details his mind stores.
Just after Christmas
3 min. 1977
This lyrical film is consistent with the themes of melancholy and loss in Martin's other films. Bleached-out images of a snowy landscape reveal the dark outlines of dead evergreen trees. As we contemplate this season's casualties scattered about the snowy backdrop, somewhere a plane flies overhead as if to signify man's mediated, mechanical presence in the natural context. (Maria Insell)
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Mixed Signals
8 min. 2005
Also available on DVD
"This is it... Somebody say the time is NOW..."
A scrambled satellite signal sets the tone for the mixed messages of fundamentalism and politics. Original images, recorded as they appeared on a digitally scrambled broadcast, blur televised images into a kaleidoscope of sound and colour, starkly portraying the co-option of religious dogma for profit and political gain.
This latest work from Vancouver experimental filmmaker Richard Martin had its world première at the 55th Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin and appeared in the official selection for the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
"MIXED SIGNALS overflows with ingenious pixel
piquancy."
– Margaret von Schiller, Berlin Film Festival
"MIXED SIGNALS uses the most radical kind of
visual disintegration and abstraction to capture the terrifying quality of the
most radical kind of religious and political extremism."
– Jon Davies, Toronto Film Festival Daily
"The resulting picture, even in its confusion,
becomes a clearer medium for viewing the truth behind the fundamentalist images
we are bombarded with each and every day."
– Jill Hannon, Brooklyn Underground
Subject(s): Media studies, Peace/War, Politics
Winter Last July
13:30 min. 1980
Martin describes this film as a travelogue. It is divided into three distinct parts which are signified by the titles Golden Mile Ferry ... Brisbane,Torak Light ... Melbourne, and Palen ... Brisbane. Each section explores the subtle nuances of image, light, and sound and the relationship between image and ground. Shadows of palm trees contrast with beige sandy grounds in the first section; in the second, white joints of boat railings are set against blue rushing water; and in the third section, shadows of window and chair frames stand out against the sumptuous light that falls on a wall. A beautiful sequence on a boat, where a British flag waves gracefully in a series of lap dissolves, underlines the poetic reality evoked in Winter Last July. (Maria Insell)
Your Daughter Is Sleeping
8 min. 1978
A found narrative (an overheard telephone conversation) is juxtaposed with diverse images culled from the filmmaker's own life and work. A personal essay on the relationship between "raw" or unmediated experience, and experience organized through telling and through making images. Best seen in conjunction with Diminished, which is also about art imperfectly containing experience.
Geometria
3:48 min. 1992
This whimsical film intercuts images of accordion playing with abstract geometrically shifting colours and shapes. A multilayered soundtrack accompanies the images, combining accordion music with a variety of mechanical noises.
Murmuration
8 min. b/w 1993
"A cast of hawks ... a watch of nightingales ... a murmuration of starlings."Murmuration is a black and white poetic study of the starling. Using animated live action, and optically printed images, the filmmaker muses on the destiny of "sturnis vulgaris," deplored conqueror of continents.
Subject(s): Animals
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