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Canoe
The film traces the anguish a middle-aged woman endures as she contemplates a decision on a summer day that might end her own life and that of her husband who suffers a long term and incurable illness.
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Kidnappé
A 17 year old suburban girl finds the mutilated body of her best friend in a park resulting in her becoming complacent and paranoid.
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Sonata for Christian
Christian is a young suburban boy who learns more about himself than he expects every time he goes to his piano lesson.
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Sorrow's Companion
A drama about a young Aboriginal man who just gets released from jail. He wants to make changes in his life but the bad choices he makes get in the way. We discover how these bad choices affect his life.
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Open Window
A backyard birthday party is consumed with tension when an abusive relationship between the birthday boy’s parents is revealed.
Biography
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Cam Woykin graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Lethbridge in 2003. He has since completed numerous short films, screening his work throughout Canada and internationally. Woykin currently resides in Toronto, where he is completing his Master’s of Fine Arts in film production at York University.
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The Scared Seven
One young foster child defies all odds to establish balance through routine and spiritual enlightenment.
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Chinatown
A multi-layered epic set in the heart of Winnipeg’s historic Chinatown. It is the story of a half-baked opium addict, fighting to preserve Chinatown in the face of “progress.” Photographed on old 16mm color film stocks, combined with found footage, and using a collage technique, Chinatown is a poppy-perfumed protest against the faceless/sameness identity smaller cities get bullied into accepting, often at the expense of real history and identity.
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Devil on Commission
After succumbing to a fatal fall while 'changing a shower curtain', Hugh really wants to get to Heaven. Unfortunately, the wait might simply be too long. The officious operator on the other end of the line has too many forms for Hugh to fill out before he can be allowed in. And, adding insult to injury, the sight of his own corpse is really starting to get to him. Luckily, the road to Hell is easy and sounds like a lot more fun. All Hugh has to do is say OK. But at what price...and who's this Darryl guy, anyway?
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fish in barrel
A live action experimental drama focused on a young man's psychological struggle that combines elements of sculpture, photography, and video to slow time and visually explore the idea of internal conflict. This struggle erupts into visions that question what lies below the surface and is extended into an underwater environment that can be seen as nurturing, dangerous, inhospitable, safe, or distant.
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The Red Hood
Set in the Canadian prairies during the Great Depression, The Red Hood is a dark re-telling of the traditional fable Little Red Riding Hood.
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Truce
Truce eloquently depicts the fine line between soldier and human being; at what point do we see the person and not an enemy.
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A Good Indian
A fair skinned First Nations person has his pride and identity put to the test when two bar patrons involve him in a discussion.
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La Revue
Art forms have been killing each other off for centuries. In an artistic autopsy, Aiken and Majzels examine the death of vaudeville. Through dance, performance and music, this film uses the trappings of vaudeville to tell the story of its demise. With a cabaret of sad double acts, aging burlesque dancers and tired magicians, the film takes a humorous and macabre look into the forgotten arts.
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La Revue
Art forms have been killing each other off for centuries. In an artistic autopsy, Aiken and Majzels examine the death of vaudeville. Through dance, performance and music, this film uses the trappings of vaudeville to tell the story of its demise. With a cabaret of sad double acts, aging burlesque dancers and tired magicians, the film takes a humorous and macabre look into the forgotten arts.
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Fabric
Fabric is an experimental narrative about a woman's attempts to reconnect with her family. The film uses magical realism to visualize a physical process of grief, exploring both real and imagined spaces.
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Goths! On the Bus!
A couple of uber-goths ride the public transit to the mall to buy more lipstick, but the subtext! Pain, suffering and eternal damnation wrapped in velvety angst. It’s sunny outside, but dark in their souls!
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Cinema Etiquette: A How to Guide
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The Lobby
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Marriage
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Smoked Lizard Lips
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Two Men in Search of a Plot
Two men attempt to accomplish a simple task - the disposing of a body. Unfortunately, every time they try to dump it somewhere, they get caught and are forced to dispose of yet another hapless victim. The body count escalates while our heroes desperately try to stay calm. Morality, the impossibility of accomplishing our goals and four or five good belly laughs, all in one short package.
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Tutulungan Kita - I'll Help You
A Filipino man new in Canada fumbles helping a Filipino-Canadian woman at a bus stop. What happens next is a connection they soon develop that goes beyond their cultural ties.
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Lifetime
A 1960's angel helps a 1990's teenage boy in a struggle over life and death.
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Subterranean Passage
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Did Jesus Ever Laugh?
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My Relationship with Film and Why I Love Him
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Keeping Quiet
Bob tries out the world of classified dating to disastrous results.
Biography
Shane Belcourt is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and musician based in Toronto. His feature film, Tkaronto, has played many international film festivals, most recently winning the Best Director prize at the 2008 Dreamspeakers Film Festival and 2008 Talking Stick Film Festival. Shane was the recipient of the 2007 IFC Mentorship Award and one of 22 filmmakers chosen for the 2007 TIFF Talent Lab. Most recently Shane co-wrote and directed Boxed In, a short film produced by the NFB that was included in the Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Currently, Shane is working as the writer-director for two animation projects, a half-hour animation on problem gambling in Aboriginal communities and a personal short animated documentary about growing up the son of a Metis rights leader, Red Car, Blue Hood. Shane has also been selected to Telefilm's Feature Aboriginal Storytellers Program to further develop his next dramatic feature film, Better Place and was selected to be the Filmmaker in Residence by the Winnipeg Film Group in January 2010.
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Phantom of the Cinematheque
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We're Talking Vulva
At long last, everything you've always wanted to know about 'down there' but were afraid to ask. A tender tale wherein our heroine, Ms. V..soul sisters her way into your heart with the hottest rap this side of the uterus. She sings!!! She dances!!! She's Big!!! It's a wear and care manual, it's a delightful tour, its a Rock Video.
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Nocturne
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I'm Alright Ma
A disturbing, frightening film about the frequently callous and unthinking exchanges between an adolescent and parent, and their horrific consequences.
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If
A timid man longs to speak to the woman he's been secretly photographing for years.
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Checkers
A couple of slackers spend the afternoon at home, playing a paranoid game of checkers, while in a drug-induced haze.
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Blow Me
Blow Me is the metaphorical story of news columnist Ashley Tray, who struggles to write for a local newspaper, nicotine-free. He is under constant stress by his boss, Mr. Cornflower, to meet his deadlines but it just isn’t the same without his sacred muse: Nicotine.
Throughout the film, he is constantly taunted by cigarette smoking characters, which are meant to represent the various brands of the cigarettes themselves. He is eventually drawn back into the world of smoking, and as result, he is able to write again. However, this causes him to lose control of his life, along with his job and his girlfriend, and in the end all he has left is addiction.
This film is a social satire on cigarette advertising that presents smoking as sexually appealing rather than the disgusting reality.
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Snapperdoodle
SNAPPERDOODLE was conceived by Arlea Ashcroft and Andrea von Wichert, in the summer of 2006, as a way to harness the power of the puss and discover a way to create art without resorting to becoming escorts, prostitutes, or kept women. They realized they could paint with their pinks and pave their own way.
SNAPPERDOODLE is a statement about the role women's sexuality plays in the art world and society. Are we just vaginas? Is a painting of a vagina worth more than a painting created with a vagina or vice versa? How strong is the need of an artist to create and to what lengths will she go?
A woman paints with her vagina to please the art hungry masses that crowd her gallery and her life.
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Iris & Nathan
A short drama about romance and identity, intended for urban adult audiences.
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Sparky versus Rocco
A circus clown steps into a boxing ring against a brute fighter and attempts to win the bout using gags instead of blows.
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The Obsession of Billy Botski
A young man meets his obsession, a ghostly '60's Playboy-bunny styled "Connie," and is never the same!
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Indian
At the Canadian National Spelling Bee speller Darryl Nepinak stumbles upon a familiar word.
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Stryker
The raw tale of the Indian Posse street gang's pulse-pounding fight for dominance in the drug wars of Winnipeg's North End.
Killer cop smack-downs, hell-raising hoods, lascivious foster moms and trannies packin' heat come together in this uproarious, unnervingly real landmark film where thug membership comes at mortal costs.
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The Key
The Key deals with the struggles for personal, uncompromised freedom in the face of responsibilities to others. The story follows, Satan, the representation of the uncontrolled side of the psyche, striving to escape from his imprisonment in Hell. Between him and the way out is Sin, a figure from his past who holds the key to his desires. The film explores the humanity and the desperation of the two characters, asking, can we survive without a dark side?
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Without Arms
Without Arms is the story of four women who became friends and formed a political group during college. They decided, collectively, to make a statement by cutting off their right arms. Moments after, one member (Diane), decided to have her arm surgically sewn back on. As a result, she becomes alienated by the group and is forced to return to isolation. The film is a mock documentary, tracing the group’s story through interviews with each member.
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Playing Dead
In Playing Dead the character speaks about “fake suicide” as though it is a productive and fulfilling part of her life. Her dialogue has been modeled loosely around artist interviews, using self-assurance and confidence to talk about a ridiculous and disconcerting subject.
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The Nature of Nicholas
Set on the Canadian Prairie, The Nature of Nicholas is a unique coming-of-age story of a twelve-year old boy wrestling with an attraction to his best friend and tormented by the ghost of his father. Twelve-year-old Nicholas is the focus of this unique coming of age story about the tumult of budding sexuality and a boy’s struggle to reconcile his desires with what’s expected of him.
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The Reason Why
David and Corrie are two people struggling to understand the situations they are in. Each has questions to ask the other, but neither is ready-or willing-to give answers.
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Weave
After pulling off a flawless heist, three friends rush to an undisclosed location to pay a ruthless loan shark an old gambling debt. But between the robbery and the meeting, something unimaginable happens. Now, with the wheels set in motion, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues. And as the truth of the story unfolds, the question remains: who is really the hunter and the hunted?
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Horsethieves
This is the Story of Erland Eastly, a factory worker who dreams of a job on the oil rigs. In need of money, Eastly joins a group of three petty thieves, led by a charismatic sociopath. This film follows the group of dysfunctional young men over the course of a weekend. Set in a small town in Canada, Horsethieves examines lost young men who genuinely wish to improve their lives but don't.
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Open Window
Roman, a reclusive student, and his neurotic roommate spy on their neighbors from their apartment window. Becoming enamored with his attractive neighbor, Roman poses as a random caller to become acquainted. As he slowly wins her trust he is forced to conceal his true identity. Things go wrong when Roman’s roommate Albert, who has been kept in the dark, recognizes his new girlfriend. Open Window is a dark comedy with a blend of eccentric characters and uses a probing camera creating a queasy sense of voyeurism.
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Peep Show: An Erotic Comedy
Glimpse into the strangely erotic world of Hugo and Sabina, an eccentric duo playing out queer fantasies in a peepshow box of their own making.
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Bushwackin
The Bushwackin' DVD is a collection of short films and music videos by Mike Maryniuk and the D Rangers.
Maryniuk's films have screened in many countries including; the UK, Germany, Italy, United States, and Canada.
short films
Bushwact
Carrot Teen
Spawn of Pickerel Ron
Chicken Scratch
Slaughterbed
music videos
Stoney Mountain Breakdown
We Stay High & Lonesome
Cherokee Surf
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504938C
This film is about rebirth - a young man coming to grips with his past and trying to change the future. This film takes place mostly in his jail cell as he burns Indian medicine for strength. While the medicine burns and smoke comes up from a wooden smudge bowl he reflects on his past. As he leaves prison, and the experience of rebirth, he has to decide between his family and his gang life.
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Between Static
A comedy about the everyday annoyance of waiting at a red light. When a normally subdued man, Benton, is forced to wait at an unchanging red stop light, it forces him to re-evaluate his own unwillingness to change. Will Benton decide to take a risk and drive through the intersection or sit and accept his fate?
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Dude vs. Dude
It seems like any other evening, as one dude watches some TV, chats on the phone, and then hits the hay. As night falls, things go awry as this dude has to deal with some frightening events while at the same time also has to defend his home territory. Watch how events unfold, and find out who the real trickster is as this light hearted, suspenseful comedy takes the viewer by surprise.
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The Director's Cut
It’s a bad day on set for notorious hack director Tobias Sheldrake. His usually-unstoppable will runs headfirst into the stubbornly immovable ego of rising star Alex Winfield. All of Tobias’ efforts to regain control of the situation founder on the rocky shores of Alex’s pure, untempered assholery. Drastic measure must be taken. Very drastic.
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The Sculptor
A sculptor deals with the real and the unreal that surrounds his life.
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Lost
short
Angela, a disillusioned young woman, moves away from her troubled home into her recently deceased Aunty Esther's apartment. On the edge of a dismal hospital complex, the house is not quite what it seems. And, its many inhabitants are capable of far more than they may have imagined.
long
Angela is an angst-ridden, disillusioned twenty-two year old woman. When Angela’s aunt Esther dies suddenly, leaving a vacant apartment in The City, Angela seizes the opportunity to escape a confusing and abusive home life and start over on her own. Placed next to a dismal hospital complex, the apartment is a house without a neighbourhood, filled with the signs of an unexpected and sudden death: an unmade bed, half eaten food, and the grisly reminder of her aunt’s fatal fall down the front stairs. Angela takes up easy employment at a telemarketing firm, whose cutthroat commercial tactics and socially undesirable employees quickly overwhelm her fragile sense of self. Increasingly, the young woman becomes aware of the presence of Others in her aunt’s apartment. As the hauntings take on mounting urgency and escalating violence. Angela begins to unravel. But that is only the beginning....what do a hospital, an answering machine, a tv antenna and an army of the undead have in common? Watch and find out.
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Isolation in the 1980s
"Considering the fertile creative environment that existed at the Winnipeg Film Group during this period it is not surprising that there was such a volume of production, nor is it surprising that the quality was so high. What is puzzling is that so many of the films explored thematically similar terrain. The filmmakers that had the courage to venture into drama, and the confidence to produce longer and more complex films were marshalling their resources to explore predominantly one theme, isolation." (John Kozak, guest curator)
The second DVD in a historical collection from the Winnipeg Film group, Isolation In The 1980s features four short films from Winnipeg Film Group filmmakers during the 1980s. The DVD is guest curated by John Kozak (Dory, Hellbent) and includes audio commentary with the filmmakers.
Films and Filmmakers
Springtime in Greenland by John Paizs
The Milkman Cometh by Lorne Bailey
Mike by M.B. Duggan
The Dead Father by Guy Maddin
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Morning Radio
When the Henry family moves from Portage la Prairie to Winnipeg in the middle of January 1980, Mr. Henry decides not to force his teenaged daughters to transfer schools. Instead, he hires a stranger named Mr. Moore to drive his girls the one-hour commute each morning back to their high-school in Portage. ‘Morning Radio’ follows 17 year-old Mary Henry and her 15 year-old sister Faye as they are picked up and driven to school by Mr. Moore for the first time.
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The Coffee Maker
Ann is a young widow who has taken her first big step toward re-establishing a life of intimacy with someone new, by spending the night with a female friend, Jamie. In the morning, an unsuspecting Jamie evokes an unexpected reaction from Ann, who is dealing with the emotional repercussions of the night before.
The film examines how people deal with loss; how grief sneaks up on us; how we keep apparently harmless mementos in plain sight but lock away real feelings deep inside; how we set up boundaries to keep people away, then lower them, only to raise them again as the waves of pain threaten to break over the walls.
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Red Men Rising
After toxic waste is carelessly dumped into the river, it flows down stream and finds its way into the ground of “Northern Pines Communist Graveyard”, disturbing the dead and causing them to re-animate and rip free of their graves.
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Good Morning Native America
Filmmaker Darryl Nepinak directs an amateur film about a talk show host, with a set in his living room that runs on his local cable television network. We follow Darryl the host around his “ghetto” neighbourhood as he encounters old guests from his show and watch some old reruns or highlights from past shows.
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Dog Face
A short experimental film about a woman trapped in hell, where it is 7:30 am all the time.
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Black Bridge
The downward spiral of a group of teenage head-bangers whose passion for heavy metal music, partying and experimenting with the occult lead them down a dark path…
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The Snow Fort
William, a 10-year-old wise beyond his years, watches over his young friends as they build their first snow fort. Once the final blocks are in place, a group of teenagers show up to cast a shadow on their perfect day.
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Parasite
Jock Van Rysell is a middle age psychiatrist on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His sanity is put to the ultimate test when he is stalked by a male patient of his, leading to Jock’s breakdown of his sanity.
It ends in tragedy as Jock dies a horrible death before being able to watch Lawrence Welk that evening.
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Cleaner
A reclusive drycleaner, living vicariously through his customers' clothes, gets the opportunity of a lifetime when a hit man hands over his bloodied suit for cleaning.
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Rasguño
A collection of off balance images which examine the inner workings of a psychotic mind. True terror can be found in everyday surroundings.
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Yogen Frooze
A man deals with his addictions to Frozen Yogurt and theft and in the process manages to learn something about himself.
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Ena Lake Blues
This film is Friday the 13th Part VIII, Jason Takes Manhattan, meets the Gold Rush. The story follows the cliché carbon copy of the late 80’s Slasher movie set in the film style of a picture of the early 20’s silent film era.
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Destiny Green
Destiny Green is a mock documentary about the life of a fictional beauty queen whose story is inspired by both Jonbenet Ramsey and Jocelyne Wildenstein. The film traces the child's history through interviews with family, friends and professional relations, discussing her rise to fame, her disappearance and shocking reappearance after having her face surgically removed.
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Jenny Johnson
Jenny Johnson is the story of a girl who's only desire is to have her ears pierced just like her nemesis, Jenny Johnson's. The character begs her mother relentlessly to let her pierce her ears. When this method fails again and again, it forces the girl to seek another path.
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Baby Marleena
Baby Marleena documents a day in the life of Tamarra and her daughter, Baby Marleena. The Baby Marleena is, what is commonly known as, a mermaid, and therefore must be kept in water at all times. For this reason, Tamarra has kept Baby Marleena in a full bathtub for her whole life, preventing her from suffocating and dying.
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Où est Maurice?
An aggrieved Francophiliac pet-owner has lost her beloved dog along the absurd and surreal banks of the River Seine. When a debonair Parisianoid crooner arrives with seductive intent, she soon discovers the dog of her dreams as muted French Presidents monitor the strange romance. Lurid Francophilia!
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I Dream of Driftwood
I Dream of Driftwood is a delirious super-8 ransom note cobbled together out of the baroque letters and grandiose names of Winnipeg apartment buildings. Idealistic, absurd and positively insane with Stockholm syndrome, the film glorifies all the smoldering romance that these living spaces fail to provide.
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Purgatory (2006)
Purgatory is an atmospheric picture about self-hating, through graphic auto-mutilations, of a man facing his own purgatory.
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Color Me Beautiful
Obsessed with beauty, Christie resorts to desperate measures to achieve a golden tan. Following a series of unsuccessful attempts, Christie finally believes she has found the answer in a drug called Tan-Adril. The results are short lived, and Christie once again finds herself searching in vain for a quick solution.
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Retired
Doug fields hundreds of customer calls every day with good humour, but when the phone rings one minute after closing on the worst day of his life, Doug's decision to answer it or not becomes a matter of life and death.
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Knights of the Blue Collar
The Cathedral is on fire and the painters responsible seem more interested with saving the loot than putting out the fire. After a miraculous escape they trek the prairies in pursuit of two beautiful musicians. The courting does not last as the women rob the painters and leave them with a hapless child.
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Man of the Northwest
A boy's own adventure set in the northern wilds of Canada, Man of the Northwest is a madcap musical that presents a day in the life of Sgt. Ferguson of the Northwest Mounted Police.
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The Last Moment
The Last Moment is a multi-fractured, multi-genred narrative that uses five styles of film history; Film Noir, Dogme 95, late Era Hitchcock, Tarantino and 60's New Wave, to explore the final moments of a man's life and the ill fated relationship woes leading up to his death.
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The Claw
Remembering a bogeyman. Art-noir for kids aged 6 to 106
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Lockport, a Place for Lovers
Catfish, a condemned waterslide park, foot-long hotdogs and a miniature Niagara Falls (the locks). Lockport is a place for lovers.
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The Uniform
Trapped in a parabolic nightmare, Joe just cannot figure out why her work pants do not fit, and how to put a stop to her promiscuous mother, who keeps her lover and disowned son secretly stowed away.
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John Scoles Liars Club
John Scoles has many cards up his sleeves and is victorious.
To the victor goes the spoils,
A VCR and overnight at West Edmonton Mall.
Set to “Motorhead’s Ace of Spades”
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Sister
A young boy curious about where his older sister goes at night ventures out with a friend late one evening to uncover the truth.
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ReOrder
Stunned by his fiancée’s admission of adultery, Kyle obsessively attempts to rebuild his life, piece by piece. As Kyle withdraws into himself, filmmaker Sean Garrity’s brilliantly structured mise en scène provides insight into a man reckoning with his lover’s betrayal. (Toronto International Film Festival)
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Insanophenia
Two dim-witted exterminators are about to find there are more disturbing things than the sexual advances of their maniacal supervisor as they descend into a nightmarish world of indescribable terror.
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Samovars, Trains and Caviar
This film was originally based around a Chekhov story called Champagne.
The tale twists in a helix of upset love. A mother and a daughter are both prostitutes. The mother knows (although the audience can only infer) that they are mother/daughter and sisters as in "China Town." The third character is a drifter and a John. He is lonely and forgotten. When he meets the younger girl he immediately wants her. Her mother/sister is distraught worrying about the girl. As it turns out the girl has already accepted her fate and tries to enjoy the thrills of luxury (on trains).
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Commercials
Commercials is a series of mock advertisements for products and services, such as a fake family pet, self-confidence building tapes, and a dating hotline. As the video progresses, the commercials become more surreal and abstract, often unclear as to what they are selling, so that the products and the life changes they promise become less attainable.
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The End of Everything
Many times Chris has fantasized about proposing to his girlfriend. He has it all planned out when a simple little gesture from his girlfriend changes everything.
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Welcome
Scuttling through the decrepit and impoverished city streets that comprise his only playground, a young boy lives in social peril.
The stark, vérité, imagery reveals the alienating effects of urban neglect; places where nature has started to reclaim what society has squandered. Welcome was filmed on location in Winnipeg's crumbling and disenfranchised Chinatown district.
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Bunky Blum and the Talking Train
Bunky Blum and the Talking Train is a tragedy about bullying, a root of violent behavior, and the unnecessary destruction it has in institutions and on our psyche.
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Sharhé Halé Shakhsi
A Persian language autobiography of Iranian filmmaker, Matthew Rankin. Says Rankin, “This is the only honest film I have ever made.”
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Infectious
A lonely nurse develops an unexpected passion for her unconscious patient in a 1930s tuberculosis sanatorium.
Set in a 1930’s Canadian tuberculosis sanatorium, Infectious tells the story of Anne, a lonely nurse who longs for human connection. When Anne is assigned to care for a beautiful and unconscious patient, her imagination is awakened and her daydreams lead to unexpected revelations.
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Imaginary Girlfriend
In Imaginary Girlfriend, artist Erica Eyres borrows from the aesthetic and artificiality of low budget television; casting herself in each of the characters roles this video investigates the exploitative relationship between parent and child and the vulnerability of growing up in a media saturated world.
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Wild Turkeys
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Saturday
Damien finally has a Saturday night off to spend time with his friends. However no one seems to be interested. Every last phone call leads him into a more and more desperate situation than the last in his battle against boredom.
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How To Be An Experimental Filmmaker
Even you can be an unappreciated, unpaid experimental filmmaker, so long as you are a white middle class boy and you pay very close attention to the instructions within this video.
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Belt Buckle/ Quonset Hut
A picture and sound love poem to Saskatchewan. Standing firm against the harsh prairie wind and sun, determined and proud: the belt buckle and the quonset hut.
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Ok, Now What?
A happy-go-lucky guy is out for an evening stroll when trouble finds him. Will evil prevail or will the good guy win?
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...life happens
A street poet comes back to his home city to look for a job.
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Insanitor vs Energy Sucker
The battle between good and evil wages on in one man’s mind.
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How Spoony B Got His Ho Back
It’s not easy being the Pimp King of Winnipeg! In an attempt to bankrupt him, an evil villain kidnaps Spoony B’s best ho, forcing Spoony to save the girl before the bank forecloses on his Cadillac. A silent Chaplinesque comedy with a dash of Dolemite. Check your sense of moral decency at the door!
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The Stork
Want to hear something really scary? In the dead of night, a young girl wakes to the sound of thunder, rain... and a crying baby right outside her window. Her first instinct is to report it to the police, but as the cries move closer and closer to the busy street, she realizes police will not get there in time. Disobeying their orders to stay inside, the girl takes matters into her own hands and comes face to face with the legend known only as The Stork.
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Checkers
A couple of slackers spend the afternoon at home, playing a paranoid game of checkers, while in a drug-induced haze.
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Kanashibara
Following the death of his girlfriend in a car accident, a man suffers from post-trauma and attempts to maintain his grip on sanity. Now renting a dingy basement suite, he is plagued with constant interruptions from his landlady and terrifying bouts of sleep paralysis. His sense of the real and the illusory world begins to blur when he is visited nightly by hallucinatory representations of his depression in the form of a Succubus.
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Snapperdoodle
SNAPPERDOODLE was conceived by Arlea Ashcroft and Andrea von Wichert, in the summer of 2006, as a way to harness the power of the puss and discover a way to create art without resorting to becoming escorts, prostitutes, or kept women. They realized they could paint with their pinks and pave their own way.
SNAPPERDOODLE is a statement about the role women's sexuality plays in the art world and society. Are we just vaginas? Is a painting of a vagina worth more than a painting created with a vagina or vice versa? How strong is the need of an artist to create and to what lengths will she go?
A woman paints with her vagina to please the art hungry masses that crowd her gallery and her life.
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Halley's Comet
As she moves through the fragments of her life, a woman recalls a dying childhood friend's dream to watch Halley's comet pass by the Earth.
Halley's Comet is the third in a triptych of short films titled “She: Nameless & Separate”, and represents connection.
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Mushroom Madness
Dr. S. Finkter warns of the evils of mushroom madness in this hand processed, found footage film.
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A Common Denominator
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Amnesia
As people in her life start disappearing one by one, a woman begins to understand that her own life is vanishing from around her. Wounded by memories of all that she has lost, she is unable to connect to the one person she needs the most.
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Belly Button
After needing to wash himself rather thoroughly, Sean discovers he has a golden screw for a belly button. He questions his parents, gets examined by his doctor and confides in his priest -- all to no avail. Having driven around so much, his car needs gas. While in the gas station paying for it, he notices an award plaque. It's a golden screwdriver! In a fit of revelation, his breaks it free and unscrews his belly button. Of course, his bum falls off.
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Buenos Aires Souvenir
A woman ruminates about an episode where she was backpacking through South America, and had a brief sexual affair with an Argentinean man. An exploration of memory and objectivity.
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Cannibalism: A New Taste in Style
In the near future, ceilings have been replaced by omnipresent TVs. In the mass media, cannibalism is being hyped as the latest trend in people's day-to-day lives. Ma, Pa, and Wilberforce are your typical North American family. They are obese over-consuming and have a big screen TV on their kitchen ceiling. Life doesn't change much for this family unit. Pa goes to his job at the meat shop, Ma works her dead end job, and lately, Wilberforce has been staying home sick. When Wilberforce suggests to eat Pa for dinner, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!
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Dragoon Street
A couple of closet cases play video games while fantasizing of better eight bit days.
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Endings
If someone could tell you how your life will end - would you want to know?
This is the story of Megan, a young woman with the ability to see "endings" -the moment and setting of a person's death. Her visions are activated by touch - forcing her to withdraw from other people, both physically and emotionally. When Megan's friends host a dinner party she is mortified that her "gift" becomes the topic of conversation. But not everyone is afraid of their future...
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I Wish
Keely lives in a trailer park with her worst nightmare, her father. One night she is given an opportunity to change her life
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Liquid Lunch
Our hero, Frank the business man, peruses the Adult Classifieds in search of a lunch hour 'quickie'. He and his co-worker get more than they bargained for when they encounter a real dominatrix.
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My Own Partridge Family
The story of Jon Jorghenson, an orphan by violence, and a student of apathy. Wiling his time away in a pawnshop, Jon discovers a hidden treasure that will alter his life profoundly - the remnants of another family's long-lost home movies.
Jon takes the films home and, over the next few days, watches the slow unfolding of another family's ("the Partridges") saga. It is a full and happy history, and Jon finds himself experiencing their life through their eyes. For the first time, Jon Jorghenson feels a part of something real. Jon begins to understand the power he possesses to change his fate. Under the pretext of a school assignment, he cuts up the home movies and edits them back together to create for himself a new and personal life history.
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Something For Santa
Every year Santa Claus comes to town bearing gifts for children providing they leave him a little something in return - a cup of blood.
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Strawboy
Set in the world of dreams and fantasy, a young boy attempts to solve his mother's murder while confined to a staircase. Ultimately a story of a boy emerging from childhood and accepting responsibility, 'strawboy' examines those often hazy borders between fantasy and reality, and those between early life and adulthood.
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The Blue Bridge
A thirteen year old boy and a young woman, who is a deaf-mute and a prostitute, meet each other on the bridge every morning. Since he first met her, he is interested in her questionable atmosphere. But one day, on an ordinary morning, something will happen between them. Basically a bridge can connect two places which are divided by some kind of obstacle. In this story, the bridge brings the boy to be mature through meeting one young woman.
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The Darkling Plain
Set in New York City, a contemporary fairy tale about deception and betrayal. Shot in Neo-realistic film noir style.
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The Fever of Western Nile
Summer passings observed the enigmatic West Nile malady stel its way into the minds and forests of Winnipeg wanderers, casting its feverish amnesia spell; immobilizing wooded creatures collectively pleading to e cured and released of their infirmity. A caution wanderer disregards her own ailment to aid the others as best she can; however the forest hosts its own fevers.
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The Torch
In the privacy of his small apartment, a man employs the service of call girls, yet dwells on the memory of a woman wish whom he shared only a smile. These memories shatter when this woman unexpectedly enter his life again as his next call girl. After the shock of this encounter, he renounces his call girl habit. The woman, later consumed by thoughts of him, abondons the sex trade.
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Undercover
A spoof about black and white police comedies of the 1920's. Two undercover officers run a wild goose chase trying to track down a drug dealer.
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Archangel
Archangel is: a tragedy of the Great war; a dreamlike world of long ago lost love; a Goya painting etched in frost. Nestled beneath a white, fluffy blanket of forgetfulness is Archangel, a crystalline city of spires and onion domes. There is a Canadian soldier, a Belgian aviator and a Russian nurse, their minds clouded by mustard gas and the horrors of war, forget, whom they are really in love with.
Praise for Archangel
“Shot in sumptuous black and white worthy of Josef von Sternberg and filled with slices of the surreal and the cruel, Winnipeg visionary Guy Maddin's second feature is a masterpiece: a wistful, luminous conflation of absurdity, high romance, heroic delusion and the Canadian colonial. Buster Keaton would approve. Bunuel, too.”
- Tom McSorley, Executive Director of the Canadian Film Institute
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Automated Phone Sex
Harold's wife just wants Harold to love her, but she has some competition. She must compete with a phone sex line to win her husbands affection. Who will Harold choose? Woman or machine?
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Brand New World
A consumer activist is out one night to poke a little fun at the corporate brand culture taking over our society, but he suddenly finds his vigilant act useless. It looks like there is nothing one can do to stem the advertising glut in our society. Or is there?
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Build Me A Woman
This mock documentary follows a lonely bachelor's effort to secure the perfect woman.
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Carpet Cleaners
Amerika, Zed and Kyle are good friends until the wicked witch Trasha comes along and takes Kyle away. Amerika and Zed are upset that Kyle is spending more time with Trasha than with them. So they hire the lesbian Carpet Cleaners to rid the evil bitch Trasha once and for all. However both Amerika and Zed get more than they bargained for when the Carpet Cleaners carry out their diabolical plan
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Cemetery Love Story
It's a steamy day at the cemetery. A grave robbing widow has just met a new special someone. Love is in the air, but a nasty undertaker and his axe-wielding partner in crime have other plans for the young lovers.
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Cold Turkey
A woman desperate to quit smoking, stumbles upon the ultimate secret to conquering her addiction...with the help of a Burmese cat.
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Dames
Slick-as-grease Dames captures all of the energy and sass of classic film noir. You can smell the smoke in its seamy 1940s nightclub, the alcohol on the guys, and the perfume on its sex-drenched dames. But instead of dealing out the genre's dubious fate for women brimming with style and sexuality, its femme fatale Roxie breaks a long held film noir law. Outsmarting her hustler escort, Roxie sets her sights on the good girl Vera, who deals out a few surprises of her own. Together Roxie and Vera raise shot glasses to adventure and score on their own terms. When the smoke finally clears, itÕs the guys that have been set up. This jaunty homage to film noir mixes sly humour, a canny cast and a smoky noir feel to demonstrate that not every femme fatale hooks her schemes and dreams onto dangerous men.
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Darkly Machiever
Darkly Machiever is a farcical fable about one of the grey men, a cog in the corporate wheel, who goes about his business without quite knowing his purpose. One day he begins to wonder about his role in the proverbial Grand Scheme of Things.
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Demons of Bars and Tone
A man is tortured both mentally and physically by his television. As the man is suffering, the television plays commercials representing his life, both past and present. Based on a real life incident of a young unemployed man whose TV addiction had serious consequences (he was found dead in front of the TV one day; the causes of death undetermined).
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Garbage
Three tenants who are strangers, share a unique bond of obsession that revolves around a broken coffee cup that keeps getting thrown into a garbage bin.
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Gavin Frogboy
In a small town plagued by mysterious sightings of several large creatures roaming the streets, Gavin, living with his insensitive father; believes he will have more freedom as a frog than a human being. Gavin Frogboy is a story of a neglected boy, his unconventional solutions to his problems and the paranoia of a small town.
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Good Citizen Betty Baker
Follows a civic-minded housewife as she tracks the missing Prince Phillip. This madcap chase takes our heroine, Betty, from her neighbours trash to a strangely exciting all girls bar, to the arms of a handsome lady golfer.
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Home Advantage
The newspaper ad read "Due to expanding financial needs I'm Looking to take on one or more new employers." A tale of a job interview with a decided twist.
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How Much for Half a Kilo?
A writer tries to sell his work in order to pay his debts. Through several rewrites, the landlord is continuing to collect his rent. And on goes the story . . .
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I Come In Pieces
A recent pet craze has peaked in a small town. All the children have their very own “finky”, a round, harmless, spotted creature brought to Earth years ago from the planet Mars by astronauts from the “First Missions to Mars” voyage.
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Joe 90
On the hot and dusty prairie stands the Oasis Bar & Grill. Within, Joe 90, a crop insurance claims adjuster is quickly persuaded by annoying paranoid Dick Rotundo to conspire in a false insurance claim. Before they can close the deal, Dick Rotundo?s uncontrollable paranoia forces him to run through a burning field. Without a claimant, Joe 90 tries to get out of the scam, until he discovers Dick has survived. But when the two complete the fraud, Dick cannot deal with the guilt and he helplessly watches as Joe offers him a place in a corrupt, desolate future.
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Lifetime
A 1960's angel helps a 1990's teenage boy in a struggle over life and death.
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Middle
Being middle class in the middle of the city at the geographical centre of North America doesn't help Mike feel any less alienated. In fact, troubled by the dichotomy of being in the middle of everything and at the centre of nothing, he seeks the advice of Brad, a new age guru/songwriter who sells disposable junk in the guise of spiritual understanding.
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Mike
Mike is released from a mental institution and finds himself in a filthy room and board where dreams and reality are one. A moving depiction of mental illness and a scathing indictment of the impersonal health care system.
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Monster is Loose In The City, A
A bizarre and humorous pastiche of images and narrative decrying the monster let loose in our minds, our homes and our cities almost every night between 7 and 10 (and sometimes during the day as well).
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Mother-Daughter Love
A mother and her look-alike young daughter have died and are wandering their hometown looking for a way to come back to life.
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Mr. Twenty-Five Cents
A story of a man who believes in the tooth Fairy! A drama exploring society's responsibility for everyone's impurities. By stealing children's teeth, Mr. 25 Cents captures their purity and saves it from corruption.
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Music
A group of infants with electric guitars compose a shocking violent punk rock song which surprises, saddens and offends their mothers.
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My Boss, The Scarecrow
A wearied office worker goes through the everyday paces of his job. One thing keeps bothering him though - his boss is a scarecrow. And nobody wants to talk about it.
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No Problem
Marcia is determined to create a new life in Canada for her family. She tries hard to fit in and to forget about the horrors of her past. When a charming, persistent salesman knocks on her door, her gentle domestic life is threatened. Pushed to the extreme, what will she rely on?
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Peep
A lonely apartment dweller innocently peeps on his neighbours, watching them through the peephole of his front door. But he soon finds that peeping is not as innocent as he thought, when trouble starts brewing in his hallway.
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Rapture
A short drama about one man's fixation on an ideal and his ineffective attempts at replicating this ideal in his own world.
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Rushes
A challanging, amusing study of an actor-turned-writer-turned-director, a struggling actress (struggling against the script), and an unfortuneate crew, on one day's shoot in a small but very pretty kitchen.
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Soft Like Me
On a prairie wheat field, in a mythical past, boys are enslaved to harvest the crops. They hope to escape, but with hope comes punishment.
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Surviving Stray Thoughts
A seemingly average man announces that he'll be sharing his thoughts with us, as they occur, in real time. However as his stories unfold, they begin to collide until they take on a life of their own
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The Alley
Bernie, a squeegee kid who struggles to survive in the city, finds a friend in Mo, a veteran of the streets who chooses to live and paint in the alley. The Alley is a story of friendship and compassion between two unlikely street people, an old man and a young teenager.
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The Guinea Pig Age
In an age of microwaves and pollution, we're all guinea pigs and anything can happen. Guinea Pig Age is a cautionary tale with tongue in cheek.
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The Milkman Cometh
The Milkman Cometh is a bitter-sweet comedy about an office worker facinated with the simple world depicted on a can of Pacific Milk.
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The Murder of Raymond Gordon
An introverted used bookstore owner plots the perfect murder of his totally irritating brother, Raymond. Twists and reversals end in a funny, frightening fast-paced climax.
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Two Men in Search of a Plot
Two men attempt to accomplish a simple task - the disposing of a body. Unfortunately, every time they try to dump it somewhere, they get caught and are forced to dispose of yet another hapless victim. The body count escalates while our heroes desperately try to stay calm. Morality, the impossibility of accomplishing our goals and four or five good belly laughs, all in one short package.
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Unwoven
On the death of her mother, a woman recalls another separation that happened to her as a child. Through memories of a childhood braiding game, she comes to understand her mother's profound sadness and her own need for connection.
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Waiting
While waiting in a movie for the film to start, a guy tells his date a long, elaborate, annoying joke.
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We're Talking Vulva
At long last, everything you've always wanted to know about 'down there' but were afraid to ask. A tender tale wherein our heroine, Ms. V..soul sisters her way into your heart with the hottest rap this side of the uterus. She sings!!! She dances!!! She's Big!!! It's a wear and care manual, it's a delightful tour, its a Rock Video.