Rick Raxlen

The re-animation via rotoscope of parts of Bud Fischers SLICK SLEUTHS (1928) into a loopform.

This short, impressionistic film takes us to Nigeria, Japan, Mexico and India, where craftsmen work clay to produce ritual vessels and everyday objects.

An intriguing inside-out view of moving figures and images, made by using a color negative print. Figures and faces appear in a shimmering haze. These are shades of people and of movements, appearing, retreating, as in a mirage.

This feature film is an exotic romp through the ’60s in song and dance. A fantasy that pokes fun not only at some hallowed institutions but at itself as well.

A biology lab circa 1920, becomes colourized as the camera engages in a number of pans past strange forms in bottles and under glass. This is the basis for a formalist exploration of shape, colour and tonal loops on the sound track.

Reflections of a man who as a young boy spent his summers in a small Canadian town.

A short, sweet tape. Kind of painterly in its use of camera as it moves in a fluid way over a set that consists of a white picket fence, a plastic goose and hen, plastic, larger-than-life daisies, and some miscellaneous electronic gismos.

Described as "the jauntiest meat-is-murder movie ever made" and "irrational," "Deadpan" deals with dinner-table angst from the fifties. Laughter is forbidden. Anxiety reigns. Cow tongue is served. What to do?

"Mutt and Jeff meet Felix in a battle for the letter "U". Using old black and white cartoons and contact-printed 35 mm film that I scratched on, I combined the three elements into a primordial soup." Rick Raxlen

In the dark winter of 1995, Linda Giles, a Victoria-based installation artist, had a show at the old XChanges Gallery on North Park Street, in Vancouver. Before the show came down, Suzy Raxlen donned her black tutu and inked her sensitive hands with the printers ink that she plied in her trade as a master printer. She moved through the gallery of white veils, acting out a minimalist dance of thwarted desire, repression and frustration...

A one-minute animation treat that celebrates the art of sound poetry as Christian Bök recites words from Hugo Ball, one of the leading pioneers of phonetic poetry.

A fanciful story, done in paper cut-outs, of a boy's journey through the skies on the tail of a kite. He soars high above the earth, encountering birds, aeroplanes, the stars, a spaceship and other heavenly bodies before floating back to his starting point. An animated film for children. Film without words.

Using books of how-to photographs on the "sports" of bowling, cricket and tai chi. I made a kind of pre-rotoscope-film-basically. I xeroxed many many photo studies of the correct postures and actions in playing bowling cricket and tai chi. Some humour is intended ... I added bits of stencil art and abstract ink drawings as well as obscure bits of text in english borrowed from the book sources.

1930's found-footage, slowed down with original music.

A portrait of male mid-life crisis as told through the story of a frustrated poetry teacher--and sometime madcap radio deejay--who's fond memories of watching Roy Rogers on TV is activated when an old childhood buddy drops in for a visit.

"I bought a children's fishing set and inside there was a red fish. Using real-time analog with digital montage, I created this video just as I would practice my favourite hobby : fishing. A dense work, yet one which is full of nuances." Rick Raxlen

Hula dancing. Animation; mixed media.

Made during a love-affair (short) with bridges, road-crew workmen and their day-glow coloured vests, flags and markers, Flagman's Nightmare is part of a loose trilogy. Grey's Lullaby and Pure Mutation being the other two pieces.

Clint Eastwood whistles with Kyle. "The most engaging work in the program, creating such a heightened sense of awareness and connection to the screen..." - Marilyn Brakhage (Edges Fest, Victoria)

Part of a trilogy that started with Grey's Lullaby, Tongue Tied was shot and processed at E.T.C. and set aside for three or four years. It deals with an artist on a voyage and is reflective without being too serious. It is in black and white, and uses a strobing grey pattern of digitized images.

A film mingling documentary and dramatic elements to portray the effects of the threat of chemical and biological warfare on the contemporary mentality. The chemist who manufactures the secret weapons, the scientist who comments on them with complete detachment, the soldier of the First World War, killed by poison gas, who returns to life to discover the manner of his dying--all make their claims on the audience in an arresting, provocative way.

"I am sent to camp as a nine year old. I cannot swim, and my parents have gone to Europe for six weeks! It is 1954, and I have not been away from home much…so I refuse to swim, and fish off the dock. My mother writes in her trip book. It is the only book she will write. I catch a big fish. The camp director takes my picture… They should have taken me to Europe with them. I would have behaved." –R.R.

This video is a collage of images that takes the viewer down a path between their own virtue and cosmic morality. A quiet anxiety emerges as the strip explores the non-mathematical possibilities of the violent destruction of matter, as well as the habits into which people seem to push their fellows.

An adaptation of J. G. Frazer's text - Golden Bough - The Divine Right was conceived as a series of improvised dramatic moments for the camera. As the narrator advises the spectator about regicide - the archaic act of killing the king when he grows ill or feeble - a man dressed in a Los Angeles Kings' hockey sweater covers the emblem of a crown with a white cloth. The tape was produced at the Experimental Television Centre, Owego, New York.