Canada

  • Paul Almond – Isabel (1968)

    1961-1970CanadaClassicsDramaPaul Almond

    A woman believes she is beginning to lose her mind when she begins seeing ghosts and spirits.

    As a comment on religious repression, familial ostracism, and subliminal incestuous urges, this film might have some value.Read More »

  • Brandon Cronenberg – Possessor AKA Possessor: Uncut (2020)

    2011-2020Brandon CronenbergCanadaHorrorSci-Fi

    Tasya Vos works for a secretive organization, which uses brain implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies, for the purpose of driving them to commit assassinations. Before long, Tasya not only experiences the aftermath of this cruel task, but also encounters a more complex host than usual.Read More »

  • Bob Balaban – Parents (1989)

    1981-1990Bob BalabanCanadaComedyHorror

    Quote:
    Michael Laemie (played by Brian Madorsky) is a young boy living in a typical 1950’s suburbanite home… except for his bizarre and horrific nightmares, and continued unease around his parents. Especially his father, Nick Laemie (played by Randy Quaid). Young Michael begins to suspect his parents are cooking more than just hamburgers on the grill outside.Read More »

  • Mario Azzopardi – Deadline (1980)

    1971-1980CanadaHorrorMario Azzopardi

    Quote:
    Deadline casts a deadly serious eye at the oft-maligned horror genre with a plot that chronicles the mental unraveling of horror author and screenwriter Steven Lessey (Stephen Young, The Clown Murders), who is under constant pressure to surpass the gruesome imagery of his previous work. With a producer hounding him for his latest script, a debilitating case of writer’s block and a university film student who accuses him of peddling “horseshit horror,” Steven’s overwhelming anxieties eventually cause him to lose his grip on reality. While trying to conceive of the most terrifying feat ever to spice up his screenplay, he begins to lapse into blood-drenched daydreams of murder and gore. As these flights of gothic fancy get more disturbing, Steven is increasingly able to ignore the turmoil ripping apart his own family—not only has his wife started having an affair, but she’s also developed a cocaine habit, and his kids have become insolent and disrespectful.Read More »

  • Barbara Sternberg – Beating (1995)

    1991-2000Barbara SternbergCanadaExperimental

    Quote:
    “Beating” — to get beaten or give a beating, to beat oneself up. To beat the odds. Metal is forged by beating. Birds beat their wings, the sun beats down, and our hearts… Under this central trope of ‘beating’, with its combined negative and positive implications, the film brings together the individual personally lived and the communal, historic perspective; hatred and forgiveness; laughing and crying. Also brought in relation: the politics of gender and the holocaust; the Old World and North America. Passages of emotion – our lives as we experience them today – move through a terrain of memory and anlaysis.Read More »

  • Atom Egoyan – Guest of Honour (2019)

    Drama2011-2020Atom EgoyanCanada

    A man’s daughter a high school teacher who is accused of abusing her position of authority with a student. When Veronica rebuffs Jim’s attempts to secure her early release, Jim begins to take out his frustrations through his work as a food inspector.Read More »

  • Mike Hoolboom – Incident Reports (2015)

    2011-2020CanadaExperimentalMike HoolboomPhilosophy

    After a bike accident, the amnesiac produces one-minute shots. The voice-over weighs in on gender, animals and the end of literary culture. An essay featuring Elvis, wrestlers, boy ballet, naked cyclists and the heavenly voices of ChoirChoir!. (from MUBI)Read More »

  • Jean-Jacques Annaud – La guerre du feu AKA Quest for Fire (1981)

    1981-1990AdventureCanadaDramaJean-Jacques Annaud

    Quote:
    “Fire was a symbol of power and a means of survival. The tribe who possessed fire, possessed life.” – Opening title card

    That is the last piece of modern language iterated by the film. The filmmakers transport us 80,000 years into the past, to the Middle Palaeolithic era. The subsequent complex creation of communication was formulated by linguist and author Anthony Burgess (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), zoologist Desmond Morris, and actors in advance formulating a gesture-based relay of thoughts. Read More »

  • Michael Snow – To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991)

    1991-2000CanadaExperimentalMichael Snow

    Quote:
    To Lavoisier Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991) is a collaboration with filmmaker Carl Brown, who specializes in homebrewed chemical film development. In a series of tableaux, people perform everyday tasks — sleeping, dining, reading, card-playing — as the camera arcs past and over them (the replete set of positions recalls La région centrale’s movements). Brown abraded the film stock, creating a continuous dynamic surface-effect tension with the comparatively static views and cueing the soundtrack, the crackle of fire. The physics and chemistry of combustion were the scientific focus of Lavoisier, the 18th-century savant.Read More »

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