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The
Funnel
Catalogue Supplement 1987
(digitized for CineZine by Fringe
Online, 2007)
44 Pages! 30 Filmmakers! 120 Films & Related Work!
Index;
Artists A-J;
Introduction;
Film
Listing; Funnel
Publications;
Appendix
(Filmography / Bibliography / Screenings).
Below: ARTISTS L-Y, Pages 19-32
Peter Lipskis, Lorne MacDonald, Anne MacLean,
KMC, Annette Mangaard, Gary McLaren,
Ross McLaren, Sandra Meigs, Ted Myerscough, Midi Onodera,
Paulette Phillips, Polly Perverse, John Porter, Richard Raxlen,
Susan Reaney, Pascal Sharp, Geoffrey Shea, Edie Steiner, Joseph Tabah,
Villem Teder, Katerina Thomadaki, Dot Tuer, Janko Virant,
Jane Weinstock, Joyce Wieland, Nicola Wojewoda, Jean Young.
THE FUNNEL: FILM AND RELATED WORK
PETER LIPSKIS
Born: Gottingen, Germany 1954
Peter Lipskis was brought to Canada in 1954 and has lived in Vancouver since 1958. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of British Columbia. Influences on his filmmaking are rooted in the post World War I European avant-garde and the American underground film. "My films are motion pictures, aesthetically closer to the visual arts and music than to conventional cinema. They are concerned with composition, form, graphic design, colour, texture, rhythm, movement and physiological as well as psychological perception. Various optical and contact printing techniques on a variety of film stocks have been used to control the image." - P. L.
IT’S A MIXED UP WORLD (1982)
Colour and B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 8 minutes
A Bruce Connor style assemblage film consisting of shots from 1940's
and 50's educational shorts spliced together, with synthesizer pop-music
by Ron Smulevici. The result is a humorous but cynical view of modern
civilized (?) life; a surreal cinematic Rorschach test' in which 'meaning'
is largely a result of the personal associations and subconscious anxieties
which the individual viewer projects onto the images.
CRYSTALS (1983/85)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 4 minutes
A cinematic tribute to William Bentley, a Vermont
dairy farmer who pioneered the 'art' of snowflake photography for forty-six
winters (1885 - 1931), proving that no two of his 5,381 specimens were
identical. This film contains about 1,500 examples (fewer than the average
snowball), showing the incredible variation of design in nature, while
producing the effect of an 'organic' hexagonal mandala in a state of
continual metamorphosis.
THE RED CAR (1983/85)
Colour and B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 4 minutes
A cinematic demonstration of 'mechanical, successive-frame' 2 + 3 colour
additive systems: 'Kinemacolor' which was patented in 1906, and its
derivations which were used until the 1930's when subtractive colour
film was perfected.
THE FOUNTAIN (1983)
B & W, Silent, (18 fps), 16mm, 4 minutes
Part of a 'work out-of-progress'; various views of the fountain in Stanley
Park's Lost Lagoon, using several different black and white filmstocks,
filters and camera techniques.
AQUARELLE X 2 (1985)
Colour, Silent, (24fps), 16mm, 8 minutes
A semi-symmetrical arrangement of a French film about an Olympic swimmer;
red and blue-green colour printing complement one another as the human
body and water forms take on abstract kinetic qualities.
HOLLYWOOD & BEYOND (1980/83/84)
Colour, Sound, 314 inch Videotape, 12. 5 minutes A personal 'travelogue'
of L.A. consisting of slides and rapid-sequence freeze-frames, with
music by Ron Smulevici.
COL.- EXP. (1983-85)
Colour, Sound, 3/4 inch Videotape, 14 minutes The title of this piece
is an abbreviation for 'colour experiments'. It combines 16mm film-graphics
(colour separation and multi-layer contact printing) with the advantages
of stereo videotape. The imagery includes Queen Elizabeth in Vancouver,
the annual Sea Festival parade and fireworks. The original soundtrack
(guitar-synthesizer) is by Harris Van Berkal of the well known group,
Skywalk.
D. LORNE MACDONALD
Lorne MacDonald was born in Toronto and now lives in Vancouver. He is the Co-editor of Flaws in the Pattern: Human Rights in Literature, Toronto, 1978, and The Writer and Human Rights, Toronto, 1984. The Idaho Kid, his one-act play about Ezra Pound, was produced at the Theatre Centre in 1981. He is now working on a biography of John William Polidori (1795-1821), the author of the first English vampire story.
DING DONG / DON'T LISTEN (1983)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, total 5 minutes Both films use the relationship
between sound and image to explore the relationship between text and
commentary. Ding Dong juxtaposes visual and aural versions of a text
by Saussure and a commentary on it by Derrida. Don't Listen takes a
text from The Tin Drum. Since the corresponding sequence was censored
(in Ontario) from the Schlondorff film, my film has no image, a lack
for which it compensates by a grotesque commentary after the style of
Gunter Grass. - D. L.M.
KMC
KMC attended Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver and then York University, Toronto as a film student and the Ontario College of Art to study experimental arts. She has been involved with the Pacific Cinemateque and Metro Media in Vancouver and is currently involved with Trinity Video and the Funnel Film Centre. She works in video and performance art in addition to filmmaking.
UPSTAIRS, INSIDE (1985)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), Super 8, 5 minutes. KMC's first film represents
a sophisticated conjunction of a woman's private obsession with the
hidden taboo of menstruation, and images of women which reveal while
they disguise the power of blood and its connection to violence and
sexuality. - Dot Tuer, Canada House Programme Notes
ART ACADEMY (1986)
B & W, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 6 minutes
All is not well at the Art Academy. A life drawing class is in session.
The guys are drawing from a male model but the girls are in the corner
whispering. - Jim Anderson
ANNETTE MANGAARD
Annette Mangaard was born in Denmark and raised in Toronto. She studied at the Ontario College of Art and subsequently worked with an Inuit printmaking co-op in the Arctic where she began shooting Super 8 films. More recently she has been involved in film and performance art at the Theatre Centre in Toronto.
SHE BIT ME SERIOUSLY (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 18 minutes Follows the paths of two
young women in their individual obsessions. Pasta and pinball are symbols
of the intellectual and the physical. Each of the scenes representing
reality is followed by a corresponding metaphor. A startling dream sequence
concludes the story. Original soundtrack by The Palace at 4 A.M.
NOTHING BY MOUTH (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 7.5 minutes
A visual response to three poems by author Karen MacCormack. Each of
the pieces utilizes a different interpretive manner in dealing with
themes of: the fear of intimacy within relationships, the trauma of
hospitalization, and loneliness. Original soundtrack by Walter Yarwood.
HER SOIL IS GOLD (1986)
Colour, Sound, ( 24 fps), 16mm, 9. 5 minutes (also available in 3/4
and 112 inch Videotape)
Her Soil Is Gold was shot on location in Egypt, with a pocket-sized
Super 8 camera. It was then optical printed frame by frame by the filmmaker.
This allowed for manipulation in terms of the colour, light density,
framing, and the sense of time of the original footage. The film moves
through history in the sense that it begins along the banks of the Nile,
passes through tiny villages with people working in the fields, to the
pyramids of Giza, through the bedlam of downtown Cairo, and ends up
on a fishing boat full of German and Australian tourists on the Red
Sea. The boat pulls up to a desert island of pure white sand, the two
native guides go up on the beach to build a barbecue for the fish they
just caught, the midday sun beats relentlessly down on the shimmering
sea. The tourists never leave the boat. - A. M.
THERE IS IN POWER...SEDUCTION (1986)
B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 5 minutes (also available 3/4 and
1/2 inch Videotape)
A brief lyrical look at the symbolic ambiguity of corporate versus sensual
power as embodied in a female form. Does a woman adopt the mannerisms
of a man when she enters the 'male dominated' territory of corporate
power? There Is In Power ... Seduction draws parallels between the classical
world of sexual servitude and the corporate world's preoccupation with
position and status. Both illustrate the inherent and ironic similarities,
and although both are presented as female roles in the film, the implications
cannot be dismissed as either purely feminine or feminist… and
are depicted as neither explicitly nor didactic. The body is language.
Power seduces and is seductive.
GARY McLAREN
Gary McLaren works from a background in still photography, rediscovering film before graduating from Ryerson's Media Studies program. He has been involved with the Funnel for some time, and now serves as our Production Co-ordinator. Gary has a particular love of the mechanics of filmmaking, employing obscure set-ups and printing technology to present his vision of the world and beyond.
69.8 (1985) $25 Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm,
7 minutes
Using rhythm of motion, colour and sound, the film oscillates in audio-visual
syncopation. It traces a person's existential despair, from a death
obsession through to an acceptance of life as life, all the while battling
the forces of science and emotion.
WHITE ANTS ATE MY BRAIN (1985)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), Super 8, 3 minutes
PALM SUNDAY (1985)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 10 minutes, Filmmaker must be present.
Made with clips from a cynic's trim bin. Humorous, I hope, and with
stereo sound...
PASS THE P'S (1985)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 7 minutes With Cathy Brotherton, Gary
Kaustinen, Jan Mather, and Mark Thimble.
JUNE 30, 1985 (1986)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), 16mm from Super 8, 4 minutes
A portrait of Mark Trumble. The film describes spatial and temporal
concerns through the subjects thoughts, and through the manipulation
of the film medium. - G. M.
JUST TALK (1986)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 17 minutes "Episodic misadventures
of the post modern Egyptian... recall that history, is the cure for
memory." - Michael Hoolboom
The Church is a centre of delusive guilt, eminating rays of powerful
influence over a strange couple's lives. Relationships collide at oblique
angles to split thoughts into articulated non-communication. Telephone
lines cross, spanning centuries, while people just talk and look on.
- G. M.
ROSS McLAREN
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information.)
BABY GREEN (1974)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), Super 8, 10 minutes
Baby Green reveals the underlying polymorphous desires which men suppress
in their social construction of heterosexual identities. – Dot
Tuer
Ross McLaren's Baby Green stands out as a penetration of the veil which
separates ordinary life from the hidden world of perverse sensuality.
The films of McLaren (and Snow and Brakhage and a tribe of others) are
also demonstrations of critical invention, cutting away at pat notions
of how camera, screen and image are used. - John Bentley Mays
SANDRA MEIGS
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information.)
THE WESTERN GOTHIC (1984)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 5 minutes
The Western Gothic explores the role of gender in a fantasy cowboy/western
story told in the first person. Shot in Horseshoe Canyon in the Badlands
of Alberta, the film's imagery consists of a spinning sequence inside
the walls of the canyon. A tympany drumroll vibrates throughout the
film while dinosaur names are recited. The humorous and somewhat erotic
story about finding a wounded cowboy and nursing him/her back to health,
is repeated in the first person from both the captive/captor viewpoints.
APHASIA
Now available in 16mm.
(for film description please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984).
TED MYERSCOUGH
I studied film history and theory at the University of Toronto where I was curator for the Hart House Film Club. Currently I am a member of the A Space Film Committee and have recently become an associate member of the Funnel. - T. M.
COMMUNIQUE (1984/85)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 12 minutes. Coherence and purpose
become 'tin-spliced' in the life of a copywriter whose 'aphasic impressions'
of the world compel him to take a journey he's not likely to forget.
The film experiments with sound-image relations in the construction
of narrative, using a voice-over monologue that maintains a tenuous
link with the visual images. The placement of the viewer as integral
to the production of meaning is counterpointed with the dissemination
and failure of meaning for the story's character. - T. M.
MIDI ONODERA
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information.)
IDIOTS DELIGHT (1983)
B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 5 minutes
For the most part celibacy has been looked upon as a social misfortune,
an inconvenient form of alienation. Popular attitudes towards celibacy
often involve - and perpetuate - this assumption of sexual repression
on the part of the celibate. However, I believe celibacy to be more
of a sexual choice which operates from the perspective of the individual.
It is an unfamiliar alternative to those socially generated; heterosexual,
homosexual, ambisexual. - M. O.
VILLE? QUELLE VILLE? (1984)
Colour, Sound, ( 24 fps), Super 8, 4 minutes While Onodera's earlier
work explored the possibility of imaging women's subjective relationship
to a world constructed through male dominated codes of representation,
Ville? Quelle Ville? moves into the genre of the film-poem, utilizing
a voice-over to emphasize the disjunction of the documentary image and
the subjective impressions which constitute a woman's internal reality.
DEAD ZONE (1985)
Colour, Cassette Sound, (24 fpsw), Super-8, 2.5 minutes
Images, repetitive in visual completion combine with a popular music
track and self-acknowledging voice-over to form a void of numbed loneliness
and dissatisfaction. – M.O.
MADE IN JAPAN (1985)
Colour, Cassette Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 2.5 minutes
North American portrayals of Japan perpetuate the myths of Americanized
culture, distorting and misrepresenting traditional values still prevalent.
TEN CENTS A DANCE (PARALLAX) (1985)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 30 minutes
'Parallax' is the apparent change in position of an object resulting
from the change in direction or position from which it is viewed. -
M. O.
Confusion, underlying meaning and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a 'one night stand', they generate unique sensations - mixed emotion, risk, excitement. The film employs formal devices in a manner which is simple yet effective. Its subject matter, sexuality and communication, gains depth and poignancy through the artist's decision to shoot the film's three scenes for projection in a double screen configuration, providing an elegant solution to deal with potentially sensationalist subject matter. The separation which the two screens impose on the film's viewing evokes the aloneness which is the common experience of all human beings and the spaces we hope to bridge.
FILMS BY PAULETTE PHILLIPS and GEOFFREY SHEA
PAULETTE PHILLIPS has been producing video, performance and film since 1981. Her work is distributed by V Tapes, The Kitchen, and The Funnel. She currently lives in Toronto and is an instructor of film and video at the Ontario College of Art, and is a founding member of United Media Art Studies.
GEOFFREY SHEA has worked in film, photography, installation, performance, and videotext. He is currently involved primarily in video and is a founding member of United Media Art Studies.
HOW AM I ABUSED (1985)
Colour, Silent,(24 fps), Super 8, 10 minutes
This silent film attempts to implicate the viewer in the act of listening
to how we sound boxed in. It coaxes the imagination to imply sounds,
it cries for audio.- P.P. & G.S.
STILL HERE, STILL THERE (TRAVELOGUE) (1984)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), Super 8, 20 minutes
Still Here, Still There is a collage of images and sounds recorded in
England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Morocco, France and Canada between February
and May 1983. The film forms a loose narrative based on the impressions
specific to the (a) location and time. - P. P. & G.S.
POLLY PERVERSE
Born: Vancouver, 1961
Polly Perverse is originally from Vancouver and has been making films and-videos since coming to Toronto in 1983.
THE FREUD JUNG SPLIT (1986)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 10 minutes Legend has it Freud was the
original victim of the exploding cigar gag. It seems the doctor had
a lot of trouble seeing what was so funny and taking any implications
contained within the incident seriously. He was said to have remarked
later "Sometimes an exploding' cigar is just an exploding cigar."
JOHN PORTER
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information.)
CYCLE CIRCLE (1983)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 7 minutes
A "Porter's Condensed Ritual".
BEACH PARTY (1983)
Colour, Silent, (6 - 18 fps), Super 8, 5 - 15 minutes
A "Porter's Condensed Ritual".
FAMILY PORTRAIT (1983)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 7 minutes
A sound portrait of the filmmaker's/ John Porter's family. A personal
documentary, and the first film in a planned family-tree series called
"Porter Tree".
SHOOTOUT WITH REBECCA (1983)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 3 minutes Film/Performance with filmmaker
present.
A film of Toronto artist Rebecca Baird and her installation piece in
The Funnel Gallery provides the setting and half the action in a wild-west
shootout with John Porter who performs live in the audience.
SCANNING 5 (1983)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 3 minutes Film/Performance preferably
in a white or light-coloured room.
Latest in the Scanning mini-series of film/performances. A city panorama
is created by panning the projector around the mom and on the ceiling.
"WALLPAPER" SERIES (1983 - 86)
B & W, Silent, 18 fps), Super 8, Length variable. Film/Performance
requiring the presence of filmmaker John Porter and musical group Fifth
Column.
A 'set' of black and white background films (one for each song) accompanying
the musical group Fifth Column.
TRAMPOLINE FESTIVAL (1984)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 7 minutes A "Porter's Condensed
Ritual".
FIREWORKS '84 (1984)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 3 minutes A "Porter's Condensed
Ritual".
VARIETY LIGHTS (1984)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 4 minutes Extreme time-exposures
of city buildings illuminated at night. An elaboration of Amusement
Park (1978179) which itself was an elaboration of all of "Porter's
Condensed Rituals" series.
WINDOW WATER BOBBY MOVING (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 3 minutes
A pixillated self-portrait in the bathtub, accompanied by Bobby Darin.
DAILY DOUBLE DICK VAN DYKES (1984185)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 4 minutes, Triple-Projector and Triple-Sound.
Requires three Super 8 sound projectors and the ability to playback
the sound on all three simultaneously. In effect, a film/performance
piece.
A Super 8 Sound 'Tripdick'. A triple-projection, triple-sound celebration
of late night, multiple reruns of the old television series.
MARATHON RUN (1985)
Colour, Silent, (18fps), Super-8, 3 minutes
A “Porter’s Condensed Ritual”.
HAMILTON HOMES (1985)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super-8, 9 minutes
John’s Porter’s father conducts a tour of the several houses
he lived in while growing up in Hamilton, Ontario. A personal documentary
and part of a planned family-tree series called “Porter Tree”.
“7 YEAR ITCH” AT THE FUNNEL (1985)
Colour, Sound (18 fps), Super 8, 7 minutes
John Porter conducts a historical tour of the building where The Funnel
began eight years earlier. A personal documentary commissioned by The
Funnel for its “Seventh Anniversary” group film and screening.
UNCENSORED MOVIES (THE PERFORMANCE) (1985)
A lecture-demonstration requiring the presence of the artist and a variety
of equipment.
A satirical criticism of Ontario's film censorship law, with visual
examples of outlawed film formats.
UNCENSORED MOVIES (THE INSTALLATION) (1986)
An Installation piece for display area.
A peep-show/shadow play. A satirical criticism of Ontario's film censorship
laws with visual examples of outlawed film formats.
HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE (1986)
B & W, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 60 minutes. A Film/Performance
requiring the presence of the artist and various supplies.
A humorous lecture/demonstration involving the audience directly in
the immediate shooting, processing and projecting of a black & white
Super 8 film.
RICHARD RAXLEN
Richard Raxlen lives in Montreal and has been producing films, videotapes and installation art works for the past twenty years.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL JUVENALIA (1983)
B & W & Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 17 minutes
Dates: 1948, 1969, 1973, 1976, 1978.
From the narrative poem that is heard: " The children are green
now. They used to be black and white. I was black and white." I
glue, via this film, my father, my kids and their father together. It
is the only way we will ever be together. We hear a poem read by three
people: an older man, a man and a woman. We see old black and white
home movies and some travelogue movies. Somewhat ironic, always forgiving,
this patriarchal time-piece walks the thin blue line between personal
confession and transpersonal revelation. Like a suitcase on wheels pulled
by an old lady in a bus station, this is heavy baggage made light...
- R. R.
"Raxlen's Autobiographical Juvenalia, a. lyrical exploration of the filmmaker's roots through a pastiche of old, perfectly restored home movies is clearly accessible to all filmgoers." - Bill Brownstein, The Montreal Gazette
15 SOLDIERS, 11 MACHINES, 8 COWS (1984)
B & W & Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 8. 5 minutes
This film is a collage of images that leads the viewer along a circuitous
path betwixt personal righteousness and cosmic moralizing. A certain
quiet anxiety is evident as the film explores the non-mathematical possibilities
of fierce material destruction and the uses others seem prone to put
their fellows to. A number of images involve people wearing masks of
different kinds. We also see, as the title implies, cows, soldiers and
machines of war. The music is by Ben Low. It helps give the film an
emotional resonance and is full of wonderful melodies that are rich
in feeling. - R. R.
JAFFA-GATE (1984)
B & W & Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 5. 5 minutes
Jaffa-Gate uses optical printing and freeze-frames to 'stretch' an old
piece of film shot in Jerusalem in the early 1930's. It was given to
me by a friend and what one sees is a time-frozen place where men of
all nationalities seem to exist in peace. Some shy away from the camera,
some are unaware of it. Others hide their faces, afraid of the magic,
instrument that will steal their souls. The film unwinds to the accompaniment
of a music box version of a classical tune. Something like a clock,
the film seems both mechanistic and sad. - R. R.
DIVINE RIGHT (1984/85)
B & W & Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 12 minutes
A New Narrative, using video transferred to film. The video was processed
at the Experimental Television Centre in Oswego, N.Y. The narration
is taken from The Golden Bough. I improvised a number of actions for
the camera while wearing an L.A. Kings hockey sweater. We also see images
of a loft, out the window of a loft and a street scene. - R. R.
"On the atmospheric side of things, Ric Raxlen's Divine Right evoked the most sombre mood of the evening. Slowly paced, Divine Right is an entrancing piece that pits obscured orangeish washes of what looks to be the inside of a warehouse space, against a calm narration on the divine right of kings and the manner in which an impotent old king was put out to die. An ancient theme juxtaposed with images of claustrophobic urban existence. A beautiful and engrossing video, if not dazzling in its use of current effects." - Video Guide, Vancouver, Winter 1986
SUSAN REANEY
Born: London, Ontario
Susan Reaney has been involved in painting, photography and video, as well as filmmaking, which she studied at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. She worked at the Funnel on the production of the first catalogue of our film collection. She has recently returned from a year teaching in China and is working on a new film using footage from China and Canada.
HARLEQUIN DAVE (1984)
B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 10 minutes
With the feel of an old time movie, Reaney takes us on a little romp
with Harlequin Dave. We play croquet, swing on a swing and watch a toy
theatre play about the film that we are watching. Reality becomes fantasy,
illusion becomes a real backdrop. All and all, Reaney creates a delightful
and unpretentious deconstruction of the film medium. With piano soundtrack
by James Reaney. – Jim Anderson
EDIE STEINER
(Please see THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information)
YOU ALWAYS THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THAT (1986)
Colour, Sound, 314 inch Videotape, 21 minutes Shot on location in Halifax,
N.S., produced by N.A.S.C.A.D., the videotape utilizes a narrative dialogue
investigating mystical and surreal issues. The soundtrack also has text
and original music. Various editing techniques are employed such as
colourization, freeze-frames, text over image as well as 16mm and Super
8 film inserts. There are two actors who narrate personal accounts of
true experiences within the framework of the subject matter i.e., 'unusual'
events involving altered perceptual realities. - E. S.
JOSEPH TABAH
Joseph Tabah is originally from Montreal, where he studied photography and animation at the Montreal Museum School of Fine Art, and film and video at McGill University and Concordia University. He has worked consistently in painting as well as film.
‘1985' (1985)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), Super 8, 15 minutes
'1985' employs the conjunction of a video monitor, a sole musician acting
out a rock star fantasy, and the static image of a woman lying on a
couch to comment on the media's framing of pop culture, and to produce
what Tabah terms 'a humorous rock video'. '1985' the Wilderness of North
America." -J. T.
OCTOBER: BLUE FRUIT (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 10 minutes "God and the devil...
" - Joe Tabah
VILLEM TEDER
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information)'
I DON'T UNDERSTAND (1984)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 6 minutes
.... utilizes chemical processes, optical printing and hand processing
to create an abstract episode in his endless fascination with the cinema's
textural and 'material' qualities. - Dot Tuer, Cache du Cinema Catalogue.
While Teder concerns himself in many of his films with the materiality
of the medium, his films also create a powerful sense of the world's
pathos, opaqueness and confinement. - Jim Anderson
IS . THIS (1985)
Colour, Sound (12 fps), Super 8, 22 minutes
On the soundtrack a slowed down voice growls and groans. We strain to
decipher the voice but never succeed. In the end we are forced to let
go as it sinks back into the waters of the coral reef. – Jim Anderson
KATERINA THOMADAKI
Born: Athens, Greece 1949
Since 1975 Katerina has been living in Paris, and has studied literature, philosophy, theatre and film. Since 1967 she has collaborated with Maria Klonaris on theatre productions in Athens and film/installation projects in Paris. They are both active members of the experimental film movement in Paris (members of ACIDE, ASTARTI, various publications, curators of experimental film programs and workshops). Together they have produced numerous film installations, multi-media environments, audio and radio works. Their work has been shown in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan.
STUDIO MIRRORS (1986)
Colour, Silent, (18 fps), Super 8, 35 minutes
Produced in a workshop of women, organized by the Funnel and coordinated
by French film artist Katerina Thomadaki. A collaborative production
by Margo Bethel, Laurie Humphries, Cyndra MacDowall, Jackie Rabazo,
Paula Saunders, Criss Thompson, Dot Tuer, Wendy Woon and Katerina Thomadaki.
The women's film workshop was sponsored by the Funnel as a part of the
film series Film Portraits of Women by Women. A catalogue, of the same
name, was produced in conjunction with the series and is currently available
from the Funnel.
DOT TUER
Born: Toronto, Ontario, 1957
Dot Tuer is a Toronto writer and a community worker with ex-psychiatric patients. In all aspects of her work, she is concerned with the possibilities of finding an aesthetic and a language that is specific to experience outside of a consumeristic and media-saturated vision. Her interests focus on the exploration of women's sexuality and the world of the psychotic. Her films function as exercises, or vignettes, and are part of a larger ongoing project to locate a fiction which expresses the marginal and the unrepresentable in Western culture. This same concern is explored more theoretically in her writings in C Magazine, Vanguard, Impulse, and Parachute and is being further developed in films she is now working on and in a novel she is writing.
"IT’S CONFIDENTIAL" (1985)
Colour, Cassette sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 13 minutes
This film is an investigation of the feelings and perceptions of ex-psychiatric
patients who worked in a downtown café behind the Eaton Centre
as part of a job-training program. Excerpts of conversations with the
café workers are combined with images filmed around the renovations
of the Church of the Holy Trinity where the café is located.
An examination of the implications of the ‘reconstruction’
of the mind through architectural images.
BOARDING HOUSE (1985)
Colour, Cassette sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 6 minutes
A powerful text by an ex-psychiatric patient living in a Parkdale boarding
house is combined with a collage of images that seek to represent an
emotional rather than literal expression of oppression. The film is
an attempt to explore the possibility of advocacy filmmaking outside
of the parameters of social realism or documentary.
MY DISGUSTING FLOWER (1984)
Colour, Cassette sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 10 minutes
An ironic ‘look’ at the fetishism of beauty, cinema, the
body, one’s own desires to find in pathos: passion. A first film
about a first love for an amaryllis.
JANKO VIRANT
Born: Kochevje, Yugoslavia 1956
Janko moved to Tornoto in 1984. He had a very accomplished film career in Yugoslavia, winning many film festival awards and was head of The Film Section of the The Student Kultural Center of Ljubjana, and also taught film to young people in Yugoslavia. He worked primarily in Super 8 in Yugoslavia and since his move to Toronto has begun working in 16mm.
WHY DID YOU BELIEVE AUGUST 83 (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 9 minutes
The third eye of the mechanical being records what is happening as the
two set eyes wheel down a hill....until they meet two couples of feet
and some spilled milk.
TOWARDS (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 21 minutes
The angle of the camera changes every four seconds, the picture is lopsided
to shatter the moment and break the subjective perception so that a
new picture may appear within.
JANE WEINSTOCK
SIGMUND FREUD'S DORA (1979)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 40 minutes
by ANTHONY MCCALL, CLAIRE PAJACZKOWSKA,
ANDREW TYNDALL and JANE WEINSTOCK
Sigmund Freud's Dora uses Freud's 1905 case history to examine
a series of questions around sexuality and representation: what is the
relationship of history to fiction, of psychoanalysis to feminism, of
ideological analysis to psychoanalysis and feminism, and of advertising
and pornography to conventional cinema.
JOYCE WIELAND
(Please refer to THE FUNNEL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
1984 for biographical information)
PEGGY'S BLUE SKYLIGHT (1965)
B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 11 minutes
Filmed in Joyce Wieland's and Michael Snow's loft in New York. The film
covers a day of friends visiting, writing and drawing from noon one
day to dawn the next day. The soundtrack was done by Paul Bley. The
16mm film is a blow-up of grainy 8mm stock. The very low light conditions
and the grainy 8mm result in a grungy, dancing grain, through-the-wars
look. - J. W.
BIRDS AT SUNRISE (1972, 1986)
Colour, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 11 minutes
The film was originally shot in 1972. Birds from my window were filmed
during the winter, through to spring, with the early morning light.
The birds were often cold and suffering. I became caught up in their
frozen world and their ability to survive the bitter cold. The film
was not completed until just recently in 1986. During my visit to Israel,
the unfinished film came to mind. A connection was established in my
mind so that the suffering of the birds became symbolic of the suffering
of the Jews and their survival through suffering. The film Birds At
Sunrise begins with the reading of the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew. This lays
the spiritual ground to the film. I dedicate this film to Israel. -
J. W.
PATRIOTISM PART II (1965166)
Colour, Silent, (24 fps), 16mm, 3 minutes
Patriotism Part II is in a way a portrait of Dave Shackman with the
American flag. The ending is a stop motion animation of a set table
with food moving and swirling and finally gathering together irk a ball.
Looking back at the film, the animation sequence seems to foreshadow
Dave Shackman's early death. He died shortly after the film was made.
J. W.
A & B IN ONTARIO (1967, 1984)
B & W, Sound, (24 fps), 16mm, 17 minutes
In the summer of 1967, Hollis Frampton and Joyce Wieland, traveled from
New York to Toronto for a vacation with the intention of making their
film A and B in Ontario. The shooting began at Wendy Michener's home
near Casa Loma and continued to various locations in Toronto, ending
at Ward's Island. The raw footage is a chase wherein both Frampton and
Wieland 'shoot' each other, sometimes playfully, catching each other
off guard. It is in these moments where. we find some revealing personal
glimpses of character. After shooting the film both artists returned
to New York where they intended to complete the work. A split screen
version of the film was discussed. Both Frampton and Wieland took their
own footage to edit separately. Not long after, Wieland returned to
Canada to live, and Frampton to Buffalo. For this and other reasons,
the film was never completed. Hollis Frampton died early in 1984. At
this point Wieland was urged to complete the film. Wieland decided against
a split screen version and chose a more narrative form. The film took
the form of 'cinematic dialogue' where the creator shoots the creator.
The Bolex film sounds become the voice and argument of the film. Film
critic Gerald Perry described it as a "delightful tongue in cheek,
cat and mouse cinema game in which Wieland and Frampton stalk each other
with hand held cameras."
NICOLA WOJEWODA
Born: Toronto, Ontario 1959
Wojewoda studied painting, printmaking and sculpture at the Ontario College of Art, graduating from General Studies in 1981. She has continued to work and exhibit in the visual arts and has recently begun to make Super 8 films. Combining a straight forward hand held approach with soundtracks composed of both 'associated sounds' and 'melodies', her recent films range from a photo documentary approach to an exploration of more abstracted and improvised imagery and music.
152 PICTURE POSTCARDS (1984)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps), Super 8, 10 minutes Wojewoda's film undermines
our investment in a factitious world by constructing a simulation of
Canada's east-coast scenic moments, and then erupting this seamless
'beauty' by introducing in the soundtrack a Bobby Darin love song. Humorous
in its mockery of our perception of a reality composed by postcards
and pop songs, it nevertheless seeks to reconstruct at the same time
the possibility for an authentic relation between the viewer and the
cliches of tourism which inform our sentimentality of vision. - Dot
Tuer, Canada House Programme Notes
A SIMPLE STORY (1985)
35 mm slides and Cassette Sound, 3.35 minutes.
Artist usually required to be present.
"From a Growing Children's Anthology", hand painted 35mm slides.
Text read by Victoria Shaffelburg.
a different perspective (1985)
35mm slides and Cassette sound, 1.45 minutes "A Different Perspective."
WHAT DID YOU SEE THERE? (1985)
Colour, Sound, (18 fps) Super 8, 5 minutes
"When all the world is a hope and it jumbles up into raindrops,
we all hope." - Al Neil This film is a visual compliment to Al
Neil's rendition of 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'. - N. W.
JEAN YOUNG
Born: Toronto, Ontario 1954
I am an artist currently living in Toronto; between 1973 - 75 I studied at the New School of Art in Toronto, concentrating on painting. Over the past ten years I have continued to work primarily in pictorial art; my most recent works are iconoclastic, using the ambiguity/dichotomy of the fetish figure as source. I began to make films a little over a year ago. – J.Y.
COLONNADE (1986)
Colour, Sound (18fps), Super-8, 10 minutes
The film images are of the interior of “The Colonnade,”
a small shopping complex stripped down to its architecture during the
process of reconstruction. The voice-over, spoken by two women, traces
their parallel yet conflicting memories, triggered by this place. A
film about memory, its unreliability, and differences in immediate perceptions.
– J.Y.
The Funnel Catalogue Supplement 1987
Artists A-J, Introduction, Index,
Alphabetical Film Listing; Funnel Publications;
Appendix (Filmography / Bibliography / Screenings).
The
Funnel's
First Catalogue
1984
62 Pages! 50 Filmmakers! 200 Films
& Related Work!
Introduction w/ Alphabetical Film Listing,
Appendix (Filmography / Bibliography / Screenings).
The Funnel's First Pamphlet, 1982
CineZine - Histories - Toronto 8mm & Super 8 - The Funnel - Funnel Bios '82
