Karine Desmeules

Theodore Ushev: Unseen Connections

While visiting his native country to shoot his first live-action film (PHI 1.618), animation filmmaker Theodore Ushev recounts the highlights of his life in Bulgaria and recalls the various underground artistic movements that have influenced him. Featuring archival footage, film clips and talking-head segments with friends and family, this fascinating documentary takes a personal and political dive into the teeming creative universe developed through experience with people and events by the award-winning director of LIPSETT DIARIES, BLIND VAYSHA and THE PHYSICS OF SORROW.

By Winds and Tides

Exploring the conscious, the unconscious and the self, By Winds and Tides takes a deep experimental dive into the birth of an idea—how it takes shape, how it is released. An allegorical quest, the film combines images and words into a singular sigh.

Bad Seeds

Bad Seeds takes us to a bizarre world populated by carnivorous plants that can change shapes the way a chameleon changes colours. The veteran director of deftly connects growth with rivalry and evolution with competition, crafting an increasingly shocking duel that’s peppered with allusions to the western, the Cold War, board games, and much more.

The Physics of Sorrow

Tracks an unknown man’s life as he sifts through memories of his youth in Bulgaria through to his increasingly rootless and melancholic adulthood in Canada.

The Subject

An animator dissects his own body, extracting memories, emotions and fears that will nurture his work. As he cuts into his skin, various symbolic objects recalling his past emerge. Reaching the heart, he succeeds in identifying the burden he’s been dying to cast off.

The Tesla World Light

New York, 1905. Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to J.P. Morgan, his onetime benefactor.

Nadine

From out of nowhere, the most beautiful girl in the world sits at the table across from me at the library. Is this a stroke of good luck or bad? Her smile paralyzes me… How will Sam win Nadine’s heart? Must he seek out his inner samurai to fight the monster of his anxiety? Real courage is conquering your fear.

I Like Girls

Four women share funny and intimate tales of one-sided infatuation, mutual attraction, erotic moments, and fumbling attempts at sexual expression. For them, discovering that they’re attracted to other women comes hand-in-hand with a deeper understanding of their personal identity and a joyful new self-awareness.

Bydlo

An allegory of mankind heading for disaster, this animated short is a tragic vision inspired by the 4th movement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Drawing on the composer’s brilliant ability to evoke work and labour in his music, animator Patrick Bouchard brings earth to life through animated clay sculptures, creating a tactile nightmare in which man is his own slave driver.