Completed Projects
"With Glowing Hearts" 2011 72min/52min HD
February 12, 2010. Sixty-thousand people have gathered in Vancouver's B.C. Place Stadium to revel in the spectacle that is the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games. It marks the beginning of a two week party that will focus a global spotlight on this city of half a million and, organizers hope, finally put to rest seven years of surrounding controversy. A few days earlier, a year long campaign which saw police issue hundred dollar jaywalking and spitting tickets to homeless people, had culminated in a successful sweep of the city's impoverished Downtown Eastside to relocate undesirables to outlying communities.
When the story finally makes it to the mainstream news channels, it's thanks to the diligence and combined power of a few concerned citizens, their video-streaming cellphones and the Internet. With Glowing Hearts will give audiences the chance to see the world through the eyes of four such citizens, as they rally their community around powerful new Social Media tools to show its true heart to the world. Based on the premise that the access to information is a human right, the film and accompanying website, will take audiences on a year long journey into the creation of an independent Olympic media center designed to guarantee that access in a community whose voice is frequently ignored.
"Critical" 2007 10min 35mm
While martial law rules outside the hospital's walls, its sudden evacuation forces a critical care doctor into agonizing decision about the fate of her patients.
"I wanted to use this film to look at the relative nature of morality, and explore how one's ideas of right and wrong are created and affected by the context in which we live. I don't know if there has ever been time on this planet where life has been simple enough to allow for an absolute morality of any kind, but I certainly don't believe we live in those times now."
Opening selection - National Screen Institute Online Film Festival
"The Lunar Effect" 2008 16min HD
"Never underestimate the power of a beer..."
Every second Saturday of July for the past twenty-eight years the tiny California community of Laguna Niguel sees itself become the host of an improbably recurring event which is popularly known as "Moon Amtrak". Centered around the Mugs Away Saloon and located in an industrial area of town, the festival is inspired by JT Smith's drunken offer to buy a beer for anyone who would come out with him and moon the Amtrak passenger trains which were whizzing by on some nearby tracks. While evolving over the years into a sort of Mardi Gras for the Southern California biker community, the festival has remained curiously friendly to anyone who wants to pull their pants down, and welcomes everyone from grandmothers to newlyweds. Without any central coordination the party now gets upwards of 3,000 people a year, some of whom begin to park their RVs along the route several days early to get the best spots. With a generally well-behaved crowd, the biggest threat to Moon Amtrak's continued survival may actually be something as banal as condo contruction, as the surrounding gated communities look to gobble up more real estate.
"I love the fact that something as unlikely as this festival has thrived for close to thirty years entirely on the strength of its word of mouth reputation. It was great to see the variety of people who felt comfortable coming out and getting naked to various degrees with a whole bunch of strangers in a pretty ugly part of town. Although things do get pretty sloppy there by the end of a long, hot day of drinking, it was still a whole lot of fun."
