The Individual and Society (W)


The Wake

Carolyn McLuskie
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.

Subject(s): Grief


Water Witch

Marya Delver/Brian Johnson/Clare Hodge
23 min. 2001

Picking up where Roch Carrier's “A Secret Lost in Water” leaves off, Marya Delver pays homage to her 90-year-old grandmother, Mary Delver, who has been divining water and finding lost objects in rural Saskatchewan for over 60 years. Mary has honed a natural ability of well-witching into a mysterious art that she practises in a variety of ways. Beautifully shot in rural Saskatchewan, this film salutes a world of home-cooked meals and magic.

Subject(s): Community dynamics, Family, Saskatchewan, Women


WebCam Girls

Written and directed by Aerlyn Weissman
Produced by Harry Sutherland and Cari Green
Producers on Davie
52:00 minutes • 2004
Closed captioned
Available on VHS and DVD

WebCam Girls profiles some of the early female pioneers in cyberspace who, with a modem and some moxie, take on old ideas about fame and shame and open up a space for new kinds of art, erotica, celebrity and branding on the Internet.

Ana Voog, a musician and artist, ran the first art/life webcam. Ducky Doolittle, a writer, sexologist and comedic burlesque queen, turned to webcam work after a huge flood of fanmail from her appearance on the Howard Stern show. And frustration with her day job in Vancouver led aspiring filmmaker Dionne Loewen to set up a profitable adult entertainment business controlled by the women who worked in it.

Teresa Senft of NYU is an Internet culture critic whose PhD thesis, Camgirls: Webcam, Micro-celebrity and the Personal as Political in the Age of the Global Brand, led her to set up her own webcam. She discovered how intense the work is, and adds her perspective on the place that this mix of autobiography and branding holds in the history of performance art. WebCam Girls celebrates the leading edge of an Internet culture where women call the shots.

"Voyerurism has never had it so good. But what exactly is being seen through these keyholes into other people's lives-unvarnihsed reality or layers of personal fantasy?"

-Robert Everett Green, The Globe and Mail

Subject(s): Artists-Ana Voog, Business, Communications, Internet, Poetry/Performance, Popular culture, Sexuality, Women


When Girls Do It

Glynis Whiting
46 min. 2001

Also available on DVD

When Girls Do It takes an unflinching look at the motivations of female sexual predators and the devastating effects on their victims. This documentary reveals the human reality behind sexual abuse by women; healing those who have survived abuse, treating female offenders and preventing countless other children from becoming victims. Featuring powerful interviews and compelling testimony, it shows how important it is to acknowledge the enormity of female sexual offenses, and encourages victims to speak out against this devastating crime.

Subject(s): Criminology, Female sex offenders, Sexual Abuse, Women


When the Party's Over

VideoWave Productions
10 min. 1999

The second video produced by a group of Denman Island teenagers portrays scenes from a party and its aftermath, revealing social and family issues that many teenagers face, from their perspective. Accompanied by discussion sheet.

Subject(s): Family, Youth


White Lake

Colin Browne
80 min. 1986

On a summer day, an ordinary cast of characters gathers on a cattle ranch in the South Okanagan to have a family reunion and to reminisce about "the old man," Herbert Guernsey, who bought the ranch seventy years before. The filmmaker is his great-grandson; the speakers are his daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and others who knew him at White Lake. As their memories accumulate and dissolve into contradictions, we discover that there are still, after all these years, some things that cannot be spoken. White Lake is a film about passion and betrayal in ordinary life; about forgiveness, revenge, and the wild and mysterious potency of landscape. It is also about the invention of memory - in families, as well as in documentary film practice. Using an evocative score by Montreal composer Jean Piché and rare original recordings from the 1917 musical The Maid of the Mountains, the film renounces archival snapshots and conventional biographical devices. The distinctions between documentary and fiction blur: "All we can ever imagine of anything, is invisible, and exists only in what we call memory. What, then, can we ever know of anyone?" (C.B.)

Award: Honourable Mention, American Film & Video Festival

Subject(s): Aging,Family, Feature length, Film studies, Men, Storytelling


Why Don't You Just Leave?

Anne Popperwell/Al Razutis
28 min. 1996

Poetic images, uncompromising text, and voices of men and women expose the implications of domestic violence towards women. Created as a video installation piece for a travelling exhibition of paintings by west coast artist Anne Popperwell, Why Don't You Just Leave? presents an innovative way of contextualizing and expressing an important subject.

Subject(s): Violence against women


Within the Walls: A Story of Healing

Martin de Valk/Chiaro Productions
25:00 min 1997

The Aboriginal Peoples of Canada have experienced oppression, racism and abuse for hundreds of years. The wide-ranging and pervasive social problems they have faced as a result has meant that a disproportionate number of First Nations people end up being caught in the cycle of incarceration and the prison system.

Instead of being treated as criminals deserving only of punishment, Aboriginal inmates have begun taking part in a program meant to heal. Called "The Red Road", the program is aided by traditional native practices of self-discovery and nurturing such as talking circles, carving, drumming, sweats and pow-wows. The aim is to re-establish these inmates with the good road ... the road to healing.

Within the Walls is a unique documentary which follows the journey of participants who are inmates of William Head Institution, a federal prison on the rugged coast of Vancouver Island. Using beautifully executed voice-overs and black and white photography, Martin de Valk records the inmates' moments as they experience their perilous inner journeys. Recorded over a period of fifteen months, the viewer is exposed to the process and the issues that are raised along the way. Through traditional native activities, the Brotherhood works through raw issues of sexual abuse, familial abuse, substance abuse, addressing past wrongs, learning to share and communicate again, justice and respect for prisoners, re-claiming oneself, and re-claiming one's culture. The goal is not simply rehabilitation, but healing and self-respect.

"If I reached out for help as often as I reached out for a bottle of beer, I wouldn't be sitting here." - Inmate participant

Subject(s): Addiction, Criminology, Healing, Indigenous people, Prisions, Sexual abuse, Spirituality


Working to Help My Mom

Leuten Rojas
Point of View @ Docs
46 min. 2007
Available on DVD and VHS

Like it or not, child labour is an indisputable reality in today's world. This documentary looks at the boys, girls and adolescents who have no other option but to work for their survival in Santiago, Chile–a modern metropolis and showpiece of free market economy wherein accelerated growth co-exists with destination. Their daily reality is mediated by conversations with committed NFO social workers and volunteers that try to help and protect them. Through candid interactions with several working children over a five-year period, the picture that emerges is one that exposes the lights and shadows of globalization. Perhaps one fo the most poignant comments comes from a girl who, is asked, "What do you want to be?" The response is, "Nothing. What could I be?"

Subject(s): Child labour, Children, about, Education, Globalization, Human rights, Latin America


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