Love and Work (2023) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

Much as I tried I just couldn’t click in to Pete Oh’s world that he painted for the audience. Everything about his movie is a science fiction dystopia centered on the irony that everyone loves to be subjugated and work themselves to the bone. With the whole reversal of the concept of the working class, as well as the central plot of the narrative of two people accidentally learning what pleasure and relaxation feels like, I was relatively bored most of the time.

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Dicks That I Like (2022) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

“Dicks That I Like” from Johanna Gustin is a great documentary about taking back the power and re-claiming the whole phallic symbol once and for all. Embracing the phallic object fro the men that made their lives miserable, a group of women are able to find a sense of catharsis and take back some sense of control.

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My Son Went Quiet (2023) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

Director Ian Bawa’s short film is a very sad and gut wrenching drama about grief and how we deal with a major loss in our lives. Bawa’s film is a half documentary half fictional tale through the eyes of an East Asian man who just lost his wife. After her sad unfortunate death, he and his son struggle to cope, but he falls silent. The pair go through various doctors who rule him “sick in the head” despite feeling immense loss from his mother.

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Complications (2023) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

Director Ivan Aase’s “Complications” is a movie that’s begging to be turned in to a feature. I’d love to see more movies about the lives of sex workers and director Aase takes down this uneasy avenue in to an interesting tale about loneliness and companionship. Anna Laagegard is great as dominatrix Lotte, a young gorgeous woman who dominates middle aged Arne every week over a web camera.

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The Death Tour (2024) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

Directors Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne’s documentary is probably one of the most important and meaningful documentaries about the art of pro wrestling ever released. It’s a movie just not about the love and sacrifice for the art form, but also a documentary about the marginalized and how more and more the indigenous community is quietly being pushed out off the edges of Canada and being transformed in to a sea of blank and forgotten people. Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne chronicle the weeks long tour across Manitoba known as “The Death Tour” where a group of pro wrestlers visit various indigenous and small communities in the dead of winter to perform for children and families.

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*666 (2022) [Slamdance 2024]

The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.

Short, sweet and to the point, Abby Falvo‘s silent horror comedy is a slick and funny tale about what happens when you mess around and find out. Originally filmed in a “One Take Super 8” event as part of the 2022 WNDX Festival of Moving Image in Winnipeg, the premise for “*666” is deceptively simple. It’s the tale of two women using a pentagram to contact a demon.

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Nowhere Stream (2023) [Slamdance 2024]

Director Luis Grane’s short experimental animated film is a genuinely unnerving albeit creative narrative that revels in its randomness. As with most of these kinds of shorts, “Nowhere Stream” is an existentialist computer animated nightmare that ponders on life on the internet as opposed to life in reality.

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