Wasaga

Lac La Croix First Nation is a small community located on the Canada-US boundary waters. It is surrounded by thousands of square miles of wilderness parkland - Quetico Park in Ontario and Superior National Forest in upstate Minnesota. The film is a self-portrait of a Northwestern Ontario First Nation, it's daily life and struggle for existence. When the parks were formed, ancestors were kicked out of their traditional lands within Quetico Park, enduring terrible hardships and upheaval. Elders speak of these treaty violations. The use of small motorboats to guide sports fishermen on a few isolated lakes is resisted by those who want an uninterrupted canoe-only wilderness park experience for tourists. The ironies are not lost on the guides, Elders and community members who tell Lac La Croix's story with grace, wit and lots of original music.

A car crash is replayed as a victim's narration shifts from disbelief to pain. Colourization and motion-controlled footage suggest the feeling of tunnel vision induced by shock. Optical printing, film chemistry, digital effects and computer animation are layered to evoke the perceptions and technological mediations of trauma.

Abrasive, class critical, sexually loaded performance is erupting again in the 90's in self-funded venues as an assault against the resurgence of evangelical "family values" and the scapegoating of poverty. Dirty Babette Productions is a sporadic series of cabarets produced by lesbian writer/performer Christy Cameron. The emphasis is on dyke-core reading-rants and media art, transgender performance, pseudo-sex shows, and audience dress-up. The Manifesto is performed by Christy Cameron at “Dirty Babette’s Strange Attractor” (Toronto 1997).