"Think Before You Think" is a portrait of film poet, animator and artist Rick Raxlen. Shot on 16mm film and digital video at his Victoria, BC home and studio over the course of a year, the film follows Raxlen’s daily practice, uncovering the rituals and gestures of a creative process. Mining the...
This short, impressionistic film takes us to Nigeria, Japan, Mexico and India, where craftsmen work clay to produce ritual vessels and everyday objects.
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,...
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...
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
"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
