Directing
A group of summer campers who haven't seen each other in over a decade are called up by the camp owner for a strange reunion. Each of the guests brings a ton of emotional baggage as they try to figure out why they are there and try to work out past differences to relieve the past.
"The flashing weather beacon on a Toronto building is the structurally fixed point in this precise composition of illuminated surfaces and positive/negative imagery. Noting the 'intuitive process' of the film's first half–which was shot on Super 8 and edited in-camera–McLaren analyses and ritualizes the visual information through a video playback that echoes and doubles the original, improvised 'score.' Tightly framed with a menacing soundtrack, WEATHER BUILDING generates a claustrophobia and paranoia that loosely suggest the violence and boredum of punk." –Ian Birnie, The Art of Gallery of Ontario
A broken up, structuralist film documenting the Canadian magazine Impulse's Second International Dance Competition.
I.E. is film about making a film, was shot over a two-year period. At the time I thought I was shooting a remake of Man With A Movie Camera but I realize now that although the film is a record of its own making, it is also extremely autobiographical and diaristic. -Ross McLaren
Crash 'n' Burn is an experimental film shot in and named after Toronto, Ontario's first punk rock club. (Not to be confused with Peter Vronsky's similarly titled 1977 documentary on the Toronto punk scene made for the CBC television network.) The film, shot on 16mm black-and-white stock, features performances by Dead Boys, Teenage Head, The Boyfriends, and The Diodes".
A deliciously indecipherable autobiography of important dates in McLaren’s life, set against the richly coloured head and tail frames cut from other (unknown) films; film stock garbage acting as diary.
Confusion, underlying meaning and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a “one night stand,” they generate unique sensations – mixed emotion, risk, and excitement. The film employs formal devices in a manner that is exceedingly simple, yet very effective. Its subject matter, sexuality and communication, gains depth and poignancy through the artist’s decision to shoot the film’s three scenes for projection in a “double screen” configuration.
An amalgam of sex without guilt and sight without glasses. The importance of being able to see what you are doing. A film about confusing relationshops, telephones and wetness; and starring a preverbal somnambulist floating between word and object. –R. M.
