John Gianvito

First begun in 2006, WAKE (SUBIC) completes the documentary diptych, FOR EXAMPLE, THE PHILIPPINES, the first part of which, VAPOR TRAIL (CLARK) was released in 2010. Collectively this nine-hour essay explores circumstances of toxic contamination around the former US military bases in the Philippines as the locus for a meditation on historical amnesia, colonial privilege, and the consequences of unchecked militarism. Interweaving both cinéma-vérité and interview footage of Filipino victims and their families, environmental spokespersons, and community activists, along with early photographic material pertaining to the Philippine-American War, partisan songs, historical texts, and landscape photography, both films are an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.

a short meditation on the student residency of Boston’s historic Mission Hill neighborhood.

Five «cinematographic letters» by five filmmakers addressed to individuals with whom it was impossible to correspond in real life. Filmed in a combination of Super-8, video and 16mm in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal, the five episodes are, Letter to an Unborn Child, Letter to a Romantic Ideal, Letter to an Innocent Victim, Letter to a Suicide, and Letter to the Unknown.

A visual essay about the progressive tradition of the United States as seen through grave markers and monuments.

A semi-autobiographical film about an adolescent relationship, about emotional illiterates of a particular age and milieu. Structured as a series of fragments – so called “shards of memory” – the film follows the progressive dissolution of the affair in search for clues to its undoing.

A cri de coeur against Iraq War I from writer-director John Gianvito (Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind).

Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches to reveal the hidden costs of the United States' (and Canada's) most expensive and longest-running war. (TIFF)

The memory of a particular moment in early 20th century history when, in 1913, Helen Keller (1880-1968), a deaf-blind writer, lecturer and political activist, spoke, for the first time and in public, about socialism and progressive causes.