John Gianvito

Wake (Subic)

John Gianvito

First begun in 2006, WAKE (SUBIC) completes the documentary diptych, FOR EXAMPLE, THE PHILIPPINES, the first part of which, VAPOR TRAIL (CLARK) was released in 2010. Collectively this nine-hour essay explores circumstances of toxic contamination around the former US military bases in the Philippines as the locus for a meditation on historical amnesia, colonial privilege, and the consequences of unchecked militarism. Interweaving both cinéma-vérité and interview footage of Filipino victims and their families, environmental spokespersons, and community activists, along with early photographic material pertaining to the Philippine-American War, partisan songs, historical texts, and landscape photography, both films are an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.

Vapor Trail (Clark)

John Gianvito

Myrla Baldonado, Teofilo 'Boojie' Juatco

An investigation into the ecological disaster caused by a US military base on the Philippines – and its victims, their world. A humble act of solidarity, a defiant work of remembrance, a rallying cry to rise and resist, a cinematic prose poem.

The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein

John Gianvito

Thia Gonzalez, Dustin Scott

A cri de coeur against Iraq War I from writer-director John Gianvito (Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind).

Her Socialist Smile

John Gianvito

Carolyn Forché

The memory of a particular moment in early 20th century history when, in 1913, Helen Keller (1880-1968), a deaf-blind writer, lecturer and political activist, spoke, for the first time and in public, about socialism and progressive causes.

Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind

John Gianvito

A visual essay about the progressive tradition of the United States as seen through grave markers and monuments.

Far from Afghanistan

Travis Wilkerson, Soon-Mi Yoo

Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches to reveal the hidden costs of the United States' (and Canada's) most expensive and longest-running war. (TIFF)

Address Unknown

Cindy Kleine, Luc Courchesne

Five «cinematographic letters» by five filmmakers addressed to individuals with whom it was impossible to correspond in real life. Filmed in a combination of Super-8, video and 16mm in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal, the five episodes are, Letter to an Unborn Child, Letter to a Romantic Ideal, Letter to an Innocent Victim, Letter to a Suicide, and Letter to the Unknown.

Puncture Wounds (September 11)

John Gianvito

On September 11th, 2001, the security bubble, within which so many Americans live, was violently perforated and, at least for a moment, the air, the heart, the eye was pierced by the rageful acts of the discontented, soon supplanted by the vengeful ax of the U.S. response. This video is an imagistic evocation of the climate (emotional and otherwise) of this time.

What Nobody Saw

John Gianvito

Three figures - man, woman, child - roam the grounds of a State Mental Hospital, a kind of hell on earth, looking for each other or for a supreme witness to their loneliness. A visual poem with voices off.

The Flower of Pain

John Gianvito

John Gianvito, Tom Conser

A semi-autobiographical film about an adolescent relationship, about emotional illiterates of a particular age and milieu. Structured as a series of fragments – so called “shards of memory” – the film follows the progressive dissolution of the affair in search for clues to its undoing.