EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless

EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless 2002

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EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless is a roving view of the homeless occupying the public sidewalks surrounding the vacant Woodward’s Building in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The tent city becomes both an eyesore and rallying point for the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised in Vancouver’s booming real estate market. Inter-cut with poverty is a chef preparing a gourmet meal and images of the houseboy cleaning. Originally created for the EAT issue #5 of www.horizonzero.ca. -- a virtual dinner party.

2002

KNEE LEVEL

KNEE LEVEL 2002

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A terminally ill woman describes the circumstances of her love life while images of a domestic interior taken from a single and static viewpoint simultaneously construct and deconstruct the narrative.

2002

Canon

Canon 2002

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This video is a piece of pure visual music: a synchronous visual and musical canon. Each musical phrase corresponds to a visual movement: in this case, a filling of the visual plane with a color. The color fields are flat, corresponding to an unadorned melody, and the animated transitions give a visual form to the musical form. The animation is offset in time and composited atop itself to create a visual analog to a musical canon. Each visual layer fills the plane just as each musical tone of each voice is heard. Harmony of counterpoint is achieved visually with these overlapping layers.

2002

The Foundling

The Foundling 2002

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A fairy tale about the life of some inhabitants of the African savanna. And who is the fastest here.

2002

Mass Gymnastics, 60th Birthday of Kim Jong Il

Mass Gymnastics, 60th Birthday of Kim Jong Il 2002

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On the 16th of February 2002, the DPRK celebrated the 60th Birthday of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. The mass gymnastic display titled “under banner of army-based policy” was given by 10,000 school youth and children at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium.

2002

Across the Rappahannock

Across the Rappahannock 2002

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On December 12, 1863, General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac engaged General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia... Close combat through the streets of Fredericksburg and multiple assaults on the Confederate army entrenched in the heights behind the town resulted in heavy Federal casualties, which forced an eventual withdrawal. In November, 2001, I attended a small and relatively informal reenactment of the battle of Fredericksburg. About a hundred men and women did their best to illustrate the actions of the thousands of young men who offered their lives a century earlier. An air of absurd theater suffused the entire event, which provided the ground for its peculiar truth. Everyone played their part exceedingly honestly and well, and left something on the film I was myself surprised to find there.

2002

Kaddish

Kaddish 2002

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A fragment of tinted nitrate. An acetate recording of a wedding ceremony. Echoes of the bitter sweetness of the Spirit on the tongue of Man. As Frampton tipped his hat to Gloria, so might I.

2002

My Lucky Flower

My Lucky Flower 2002

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This love story is set against the backdrop of the mountains and great plateau of Tibet. By focusing on a military commander and a female soldier during the 1950 march by the People's Liberation Army into Tibet, the film chronicles the hardships of the time and the hope and patriotism of the new China.

2002

Empty Cage

Empty Cage 2002

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Multimedia artist Jiang Zhi's eighth video art film. "One day in 2001, just before the day I was about to move again in Shenzhen, a strange homeless girl caught my attention. She stayed under a wire pole in front of my building, reading the same piece of newspaper though she held it up-side-down sometimes. When the night fell, she went to sleep under the pole covering herself with the newspaper. She carried an empty and bottomless bird cage with her all the time like some kind of treasure. It is certain that the empty cage meant a lot to her. I am not sure what it means to her, maybe it is the only thing that she can take hold of, it is a symbol of home. Of course, this is only my guess. For me, the feeling of emptiness is very strong when I shot the film. Passengers passing by the girl like winds, time that looks still by flies away like an arrow…About sympathy and indifferent, about slowness and rapidity…about consistence and random…Everything seems to be about emptiness."

2002