Alexandra Gelis

In a number of interlocking episodes, five women weigh in on growing up in capitalism. Poetries of survival are interwoven with an adaptation of Mary Oliver’s iconic poem Wild Geese.

The movie opens with a quote from Borges: "The best imitation consists of the original's destruction and the creation of a self referential text." While a galaxy of Super 8 luxuries erupt, the film hand processed, the emulsion cracked in order to reveal its silver secrets, a silhouetted camera operator attempts to contain the experience, even as he is subjected to the same chemical disintegrations. -- Mike Hoolboom

This poetic experimental documentary is a tribute to the multifaceted life of Brianna, Jorge Lozano's daughter, a collaborative reflection intertwining fiction film archives, acting, and photographs to evoke memories and breathe life into moments and events. Her singing serves as a connecting thread, offering parallel interpretations. The film explores events since 1978, employing a non-chronological and non-linear approach, providing a unique artistic perspective. Shot in Colombia, Spain, and Costa Rica, it culminates in Victoria, BC, where she was tragically murdered. However, it focuses on celebrating her life and her essence employing diverse formats, including super 8mm, VHS, Super VHS, 3/4", 4K HD, Drone 5K video, GoPro, and Instant 360.

A compilation from histories of illegal immigrants in Canada, nomadic friends who quickly disappeared into new identities or were forcibly deported. There are around approx. 200.000 illegal immigrants in Canada. This video is just a spark of their constant re-invention of freedom, endurance, and resistance. The last amnesty was in the 1980’s, and the only pathway to legal status is under a Humanitarian & Compassionate application with an estimated 5% success rate..

An intimate exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: top surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. “Borders” is available as a single-channel work or as an extended installation.

Hacer y Deshacer: Poems from Within (2019) is an interactive video installation. Most of the video sequences show Gelis’s mother undressing, one strand of yarn at a time, sometimes in Panama’s Casco Viejo (historic district), sometimes in the turbulent waters of the Pacific. Using her mother’s body, she tells the story of a cancer survivor, the story of countless others. Gelis invites us into the healing process: the viewer can change the order of the videos by pulling down reels of threads connected to electronic components concealed in the Priscilla sewing box. In doing so, the artist provides opportunities for healing collectively. She uses interventions in situ, video, super 8 and 16 mm film, threads and sculptural elements made with hair, and photography. As part of this process, she has facilitated artistic workshops at the oncology hospital working with women patients at the Oncology Hospital in Panama City.

Entries are Exit points to more complex Entries. It is a visual exploration, an assemblage of forces. The doing an undoing's of my mother: a warrior. The film is part of a large-project "Doing and Undoing: Poems from within", a series of art interventions created during my mother’s cancer and healing process.

Marching politics: a tribute to the feminist struggle in Latin America. Recorded at the Women’s March in Lima, Peru, 2019.

Sytratigraphies is a hyper kinetic masterpiece of a travelogue offering glimpses of scenes shot in your native Columbia, New York, Toronto and beyond. A female fantastic (Alexandra Gelis) knitting on the fly (subways, bankomats, beaches) and making audio recordings provides a throughline of sorts, as queer marriages give way to videogame palm trees, warm gatherings of friends are interwoven with public noticings, workers mostly, street hawkers and construction zones of the self. These lyrical interludes (in this movie the in-between is at the heart of the matter) are punctuated by rescanned YouTube interviews with authors/philosophers/scientists Jorge Luis Borges, Francisco Varela, Julio Cortazar, Beatriz Preciado and Gilles Deleuze. They muse briefly on creativity, exile, the biopolitics of the birth control pill, and the necessity of making mistakes in philosophy.

A garden between Oakland and Berkley where its inhabitants, marginalized by gentrification, plant fruit trees and flowers to pay homage to their loved ones who died in battles against poverty. This is a space of love and freedom cared by Brian for the last 25 years. The island resists, as a living legacy of the Black Panthers who were the first to organize the neighbourhood.