The Twentieth Century

The Octopus Factor

A man confronts painful memories of a love affair now over. But he is perplexed by the appearance of a disgusting creature that he just can't get rid of. But can one really release oneself from the abominable things that haunt us?

Negativipeg

An examination of Rory Lepine, who sent Winnipeg into a frenzy when he beat local legend Burton Cummings with a beer bottle in a 7-Eleven in 1985

Self-Portrait

Commissioned self-portrait of the artist as metaphysical remix of Abbas Kiarostami's "Close-Up" recorded on a cellphone.

Kubasa in a Glass: The Strange World of the Winnipeg Television Commercial (1975-1993)

A found footage video essay tracing Winnipeg's civic pathologies, aesthetic fabulations and exquisite strangeness through the prism of its own low-budget, lo-fi TV advertising produced between 1975 and 1992.

Kubasa in a Glass: The Fetishised Winnipeg TV Commercial 1976-1992

Originally released in 2006, Kubasa in a Glass presents a digitally warped reflection of Winnipeg’s brief and disposable self-image, as seen through local no-budget and public access television of the 1980s.

This House

Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examine the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, the film will explore the relationship between the security of the living space and the violence that can jeopardize it.

Soft Like Me

On a secluded prairie farm, adolescent boys labor in wheat fields for a sexually predatory warden and his farmhands, who threaten to feed them to a voracious beast if they ever disobey. The newly arrived Linus instantly catches the warden's eye, and begins to receive secret visitations from a mysterious girl. The other boys tell Linus the legend of a special boy who fled the farm and became a glorious angel that will one day return to free them all. When Linus asks the girl if she is the angel, her answer is enigmatic. After the warden's favorite boy dies, Linus is poised to become the next victim. The girl reappears and promises to help him escape, but with hope comes punishment.

Universal Language

Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

Before I Change My Mind

1987: While the other students wonder if new kid Robin is a boy or a girl, Robin forges a complicated bond with the school bully, making increasingly dangerous choices to fit in.

Mynarski Death Plummet

A completely hand-made historical micro-epic about the final minutes in the life of Winnipeg's doomed Second World War hero, Andrew Mynarski (1916-1944). Combining wartime aviation melodrama with classical and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, silhouettes, bleaching, scratching, hand-painting and rubbing letratone patterns directly on the celluloid) Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic photo-chemical war picture on the theme of self-sacrifice, immortality and jellyfish.

The Tesla World Light

New York, 1905. Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to J.P. Morgan, his onetime benefactor.

Mademoiselle Kenopsia

Set on carrying out her task with dedication, a woman is obsessed with watching over anonymous interiors and occupying them. Both a custodian of the premises and a ghostly presence, she becomes an echo of how we relate to time, solitude and the melancholy of forsaken spaces.

Laurentia

A young quebecer descends into alienation and depression.

Momo 3000

December 31, 1999. Quebec is a few hours from year 2000 and its potential bug. Trapped in a Montreal appartement, Momo needs only one thing to survive this nightmare: couscous.

So Long Pluto

In space, a charming little planet named Pluto dreams of joining the Solar System’s official dance troupe. With the help of her asteroid friend, Ceres, and her human discoverer, Clyde William Tombaugh, she will do everything she can to make it happen. In this children’s film, where humans and planets share the spotlight, viewers will accompany Pluto on her quest for fame, until the moment she must face her destiny.

Sinclair

The camera’s roving eye seems to warp and bend a mysterious white room in this unsettling excerpt from a film Guy Maddin created for the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Bell Lightbox building.

Happy, Texas

Two escaped convicts roll into the village of Happy, Texas, where they're mistaken for a gay couple who work as beauty pageant consultants. They go along with it to duck the police, but the local sheriff has a secret of his own.

My Friends Act III

This time the "amici" (friends) are just four: Necchi, Meandri, Mascetti and Sassaroli. Nevertheless they are older they still love to spend their time mainly organizing irresistible jokes to everyone in every kind of situation. Mascetti is hospitalized in a geriatric clinic. Of course the place become immediately the main stage for all their jokes. After some jokes they decided to place an ultimate incredible and farcical joke to the clinic guests.

Dating Amber

Eddie and Amber decide to stage a relationship in order to stop everyone speculating about their sexuality. Eddie is keen to follow his dad into the military, while Amber dreams of moving to the liberal hub of London. The plan seems solid, but as their arrangement begins to fall apart, Eddie’s denial gets deeper as Amber realizes that a perilous future awaits her best friend unless she intervenes.

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Through the eyes of a British "documentary", this film takes a satirically humorous, and sometimes frightening, look at the history of an America where the South won the Civil War.

Born Yesterday

Uncouth, loud-mouth junkyard tycoon Harry Brock descends upon Washington D.C. to buy himself a congressman or two, bringing with him his mistress, ex-showgirl Billie Dawn.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. When small-town boy meets big-city girl anything can, and does, happen.

Bamboozled

Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.

Imaginary Heroes

Matt Travis is good-looking, popular, and his school's best competitive swimmer, so everyone is shocked when he inexplicably commits suicide. As the following year unfolds, each member of his family struggles to recover from the tragedy with mixed results.

Gunga Din

British army sergeants Ballantine, Cutter and MacChesney serve in India during the 1880s, along with their native water-bearer, Gunga Din. While completing a dangerous telegraph-repair mission, they unearth evidence of the suppressed Thuggee cult. When Gunga Din tells the sergeants about a secret temple made of gold, the fortune-hunting Cutter is captured by the Thuggees, and it's up to his friends to rescue him.

Do It Like An Hombre

Raúl, Eduardo and Santiago have led a happy and "straight" life since their childhood, until, one day, Santiago confesses to them that he is gay.