Solomon Nagler

A survivor of the Holocaust and an impoverished aboriginal boy have just died. United in their displacement, they become caught up in the flux of transmigration. A nomadic fugue, they wander timelessly among the naked souls of Winnipeg's desolate North End.

Found memories decayed by the shock patterns of childhood trauma. This films is made mostly with footage found in the bin of an ophanage. The white progressivelly disolve within a darknest more and more dense. Faces progressivelly disolves within one another.

Hannah is about to have her third miscarriage. Working as a social worker at the Mission to Seafarers, she discovers a stowaway drifting aimlessly in the harbour, and decides to give the young man shelter in a decommissioned, cold war era nuclear fallout bunker that is being redesigned by her partner Antonia to serve as an archive dedicated to hagiographic graphology (the study of the saints through their handwriting). Hannah then retreats to a secluded cottage deep in the woods to confront pain and illumination alone.

A short film that weaves together original and archival material to create an ethereal narrative texture, Black Saltwater Elegy intimately links the discordant threads of a popular history of dispossession (Africville) with the solitude of its protagonist's graveyard-shift fantasies. After opening with disquieting archival footage of the demolition of Africville, the film shifts to an austere observational portrait. A palatable sense of the duration of midnight work slowly shifts into subtle gestures that hint towards choreographed events. Eventually, a breech occurs as the protagonist fuses with an emergent dreamscape, where ruined landscapes and a resurrection of an extinct community intertwine. Using the protagonist's disembodied point-of-view, the audience floats above a reconstructed Africville, one forever present, nesting in a bed of saltwater fog.

Silent 16mm loop made for the situated cinema project at ArtSpace in Sydney, Australia. Composed of old footage from the directors' families.

The explosive story of how a stubborn band of independent filmmakers started a film co-operative that became the most highly respected and mythologized film centre in Canada. Tales outlines the tremendous importance and impact of Winnipeg on the national filmmaking scene. Packed with rare archival footage, dynamic film excerpts, and hilarious interviews, this documentary traces the history of the legendary Winnipeg Film Group. We hear candid behind the scenes stories that illuminate the storied rise of acclaimed filmmakers like John Paizs (Crime Wave), Guy Maddin (Tales From The Gimli Hospital, My Winnipeg) Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (We’re Talking Vulva, Good Citizen, Betty Baker) and Caroline Monnet (Ikwe). Often mired in controversy, the Film Group has been acclaimed at film festivals around the world – attested to by several Toronto film luminaries in the film – for subversive, original filmmaking. This documentary continues that tradition of bold, exuberant work.

Drawing on issues of memory, decay, palimpsest and the rubbing together of archive, fiction and situations, pilgrimage was constructed from found strips of 8mm amateur footage gleaned during a residency in Sydney, Australia. The original footage—a tourist’s voyeuristic, filmed impressions of a pilgrimage in a crowded urban space, where the faithful painfully stumble before the entrance of a temple—was reworked using an optical printer and other hand-made techniques.

The everyday life of a couple at the twilight of their lives.