With a Borrowed Body

Fine Pain "This two-screen dual projector film extends Brown's use of chemically tortured celluloid to the breaking point. A collaboration with his long-time sound colleague John Kamevaar, 'Fine Pain' is an extended dialogue between image and sound - like a prolonged riff of free jazz between two masters. The discordant tensions of this film will keep you on the very edge of your seat, astonish you with the mesmerizing range of colour and abstraction and the over-modulated sound vibrations." (Pleasure Dome program notes, Toronto, March 2000)

Aloe Blacc - Berlin Live

Brownsnow "'Brownsnow' presents a fascinating combination of two artistic visions: Carl Brown's and Michael Snow's. The form of this expressionistic documentary on Michael Snow's artwork is a complete melding of Carl Brown's rich manipulation of the photographic image with the fundamental concepts of Michael Snow's aesthetic vision. Brown's strengths as a portrait photographer are also well-translated to the filmic medium as he situates key commentators on Snow's artwork (Dennis Reid, R. Bruce Elder, Jonas Mekas, Peggy Gale and Regina Cornwell) in various dramatic Canadian landscapes. Like an abstract expressionist painting in motion, Brown's brilliant work as a colourist deftly employs photographic chemistry to create textures and rhythms that vary across each scene and, in actuality, from frame to frame." (Susan Oxtoby)

Sheep A man counting sheep as he sleeps. I have never seen sheep as I sleep. The sheep relax the man, he falls into a deep sleep. You are wide awake, moving through the man, maybe sleeping counting sheep. The alchemy, the dream, the scene. (CB)

Cloister As the wheel turns, the religion of the body moves to and through the physical into the psychological. We see the feared, all is moved. There is a hint of seclusion, an idea from the past re-worked and still dangerous. The participants unsure choose a convent and are still revealed. Through a window there appears a tree, and then a forest. Too many options. The monastic life, safe and sure. We cluster for the cloister.

Drop "'Drop' restages Newton's celebrated encounter with the heaviest and most voluptuous fruit of the vegetable kingdom. It tracks the eye's apple from the graceless decline of the primal couple to our own fall into the orbits of applied science. Begun at a crossroads soon abandoned, Drop's anxious recollection services this passage from orchard to orison, reminding us of Toto's immortal quip from 'The Wizard of Oz': the less the firma, the more the terra." (Mike Hoolbom)

Condensation of Sensatio... "Condensation is an aggregation of moments that appear like crossroads or intersections. The moments when things happen to you. […] I don’t want my film to exist in the past as a nostalgic reminder of the way it was, or as a record. I want people to feel the present as they’re living in the theatre. To feel things you pass every day without noticing. I work on the image, reprocessing the surface to make those things magical again. There’s a shot of houses on my street that has a frenzied jazz feel because of the gestures of camera and emulsion. Everything moves: the film, the sound, your eye, and everything moves in rhythm. That’s what Condensation is all about: it’s a building sensation that gets spilled across the screen." (CB)

Dumi A documentary on the "xenobiological" essay by one restituto A. Calampangan, Head Analytical Service, Philipine Orbital Research Center in the Year 2125

Full Moon Darkness A painful but enlightening film on the controversial subject of mental illness - or more particularly, the myth of mental illness. It is a frightening piece of work in that it asks us to assume responsibility for ourselves, our actions. How, after listening to Dr. Thomas Szasz, can we blame someone else anymore? Equally frightening is the realization that mental illness could touch our lives, not just someone else's. Without attempting to give an answer, "Full Moon Darkness" raises many valid questions - questions we should ask ourselves at least once.

Mine's Bedlam Life is like a gigantic phonograph record fifty feet across. Or like one of those whirling discs at the old amusement park. You get on the disc and it's spinning and the faster it goes, the more centrifugal force builds up to throw you off it. The speed on the outer edge of the disc is so great you have to hold on for dear life just to stay on. The closer you get to the center of the disc, the slower the speed is and the easier it is to stand up. In fact, at the very center there is a point that is completely motionless. In life, most people don't get on the disc at all. They shouldn't get on. They don't have the nerve. They just sit in the stands and watch. Some people like to get on the outer edge and hang on and ride like hell. Others are standing up and falling down, staggering, lurching toward the center. And a few, a very few, reach the middle, that perfect motionless point, and stand up in the dead center of the rearing whirligig as if nothing could be clearer. (CB)