I was able to work on the 2011 Provincial campaign for Ontario’s New Democrats. These ads in order…

• “Inspired Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator
• “Positive Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator
• “Choice” Director, writer, editor, animator

Every three years, Oxfam Canada members join together to meet Oxfam program partners from around the world and discuss our role in the global movement for change.

In 2010, a gathering took place in Toronto organized by Oxfam members. Attendees included volunteers, donors, academics, advocates and activists. The gathering explored themes of gender-based violence, maternal health, poverty, security, climate change, and food security. The result was a renewed vision and determination to eradicate global poverty and injustice. For more information please visit www.oxfam.ca

Oxfam Canada Gender Justice Summit 2010
Toronto, Ontario
Directed by Steve Guise & Paul Matthews
D.O.P.: Benjamin Dickerson
Additional Camera: Emmanuel Mutsune
Music by Valery Gore

Things Worth Knowing is a short and warm little film I shot with my friend and frequent collaborator Felix Chan, who wrote and directed this particular piece.

This is a satirical profiling of Eric Kim and Mara Sternberg, curators of the 2009 Rated R Art Show. Together with a film crew, the pair sequester themselves deep into the wilds of northern Ontario in preparation for the Fall Art Show. With the camera set upon them so as to objectively frame their state of mind and capture the tension and its subsequent happenings, there is great build-up to the eventual and climactic release.

Founded in 1987, The Beguiling has set a new standard in Canada for comics and graphic novel retail. Showcasing the largest selection of alternative, underground and avant-garde graphic story telling in the country, The Beguiling has a worldwide reputation for excellence. Among the many accolades afforded the store, the most prestigious was the first-ever Will Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award for excellence in retailing.
In its long history, The Beguiling sponsored numerous book launches, author signings, readings and other comic events. It has featured legendary creators including Robert Crumb, Harlan Ellison, Jamie Hernandez, Neil Gaiman, Joann Sfar, and literally hundreds more. In 2003 several members of The Beguiling staff founded the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, bringing alternative and independent comics creators from around the world to Toronto to celebrate the best in comic art. Held every two years, the show continues to thrive and grows in size with each iteration.

Music is Brahms “Rhapsody, Op.79-2″

Video I directed, shot and edited for Carbon, for the new JVC GY-HM700U. A professional HD Camera. The footage was shot up Hwy 118 near Bracebridge Ontario.

Synopsis: Lindsay is an abscess human laying within dire margins few of us would understand. She is changing. It is this change, and the threat she feels it presents, that catalyzes her decision for self-imprisonment. Equipped with only a camera to record the artefact of her struggle and the bare essentials for survival, a literal video diary is produced documenting her battle with things larger and potentially greater than herself.

Lindsay the Alchemist is a 20 minute exploration of a disease developed through a combination of medical, theoretical and heuristic research. A lot of attention is paid to the character and themes of isolation. The medical research was organized around symptoms of Schizophrenia. The symptoms and the disease itself pattern the film’s narrative; a kind of fictionalized case study is transposed into film. The sole character, Lindsay, is designed without the application of our most common assumptions of gender, mental illness, sexual orientation and ethnicity. The ambition here is to disseminate a compelling character story without perpetuating or condoning the misrepresentation of abject people that is too often reproduced through the marginalization and defamation of an individual’s circumstance.
Lindsay is an undifferentiated Schizophrenic. This is the foundation for every movement throughout the film. Each scene is constructed around how the character reinforces the Schizophrenic’s primary conflict (the core delusion or hallucination the Schizophrenic combats), with dialogue and incident contextualized through the variety of symptoms of Schizophrenia (i.e. disorganized thought, speech and behaviour; Alogia, avolition and social dysfunction).
I wrote, shot, scored edited and directed “Lindsay the Alchemist”. This may seem like a huge undertaking and indeed it was not easy, but one of the many benefits of my formal art school training is that, by necessity, I’ve developed the habit of doing everything on my own. In this way, I have dramatically expanded my skill set. Lindsay the Alchemist is the marriage of all these acquired skills. By the same token, it’s the first time I was able to work with a professional actor in a collaborative and immersive way to really bring the character to life.

“Movies are regarded in the sequence of Mythology, Stories and Drama, as expressions of often obscure fantasies in the people among whom they are produced and diffused.” -Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites. From “Movies: A Psychological Study”.

This is a teaser trailer for the film.

My Featured Cinematography work from selected films and videos.

Featured Music:
“Who Knows What Love Is? (Reprise)” by Strawberry Switchblade