Steve Sanguedolce

How can we express the emotional experience of depression and suicide and overcome the stigmas associated with mental health? Sanguedolce’s experimental documentary brings together four artists (including experimental filmmaker Mike Hoolboom), who speak with refreshing honesty about how thoughts of suicide have dominated their personal and creative lives. Shot on 16mm and hand-coloured, the flow of images creates a poetic visual response to the stories presented on the soundtrack and allows space for reflection.

Part documentary, part fiction, the story of three brothers (Antonio, Sybil and Zed) aged five to seven as they try to find their way in the world. Combining elements of Super-8 diary work, documentary and drama, the stories are told by actual subjects talking about their own lives and range in scope from religious transformations to heroin overdoses.

"In Mexico, experimental filmmakers Hoolboom and Steve Sanguedolce set out to dissect the travel bug. Hoolboom's deadpan, incisive voice-over offers the viewer the air-tight experience of a Third World holiday, while images from an archaeological museum to a bullfight to an auto factory establish the dual contexts of tourism and Free Trade." (Toronto International Festival Catalogue)

“Shot in an abandoned warehouse, documenting a contemporary adaptation of the Oedipus story by a group of Toronto experimental filmmakers, Antigone is both a documentary about searching for meaning and validity in the old story, and a fiction about the failure to find any value but parody.” - Gary Popovich