Since I started making films forty years ago, I have attempted to do almost everything on the films from writing the original idea to shooting, editing, composing the music, mixing and even negative cutting.  To further develop this working method, I continue to explore the manual application of colour by hand developing and hand colouring film stocks.  Hand colouring is a process where chemical tints and toners are applied directly to the surface of the film and are absorbed into the film's base and emulsion.

 I began hand colouring film fifteen years ago while making SMACK (2000) in an effort to portray extreme emotional states and experiences: the death of a friend, the end of a relationship.  In the past I've used various means to convey heightened subjective states (montage, superimposition, optical manipulation, etc.) but am increasingly interested in the nature of hand colouring to portray emotion. I incorporate the hand-coloured images with the protagonists' internal struggle.  The physical metamorphosis of the film stock acts as a metaphor for their struggle.  Hand colouring makes this process explicit as it allows these qualities of decay and destruction to surface and acts as a kind of mediation on reconstruction.  It brings out not only the colour and texture of a subject, but allows me to evoke its spirit as well.  It is this presence, this detail that I would like to continue to address in my work.

 As a painter would make their own pigments or a photographer would print their own prints, I am creating my own colour palette by applying colour to the film's emulsion.  The intensely felt subjective realities in my work lend themselves well to this treatment.  What underlies this process is the notion that we all see differently, that our eyes are like dogs, always returning to the same places, and it is in order to undo the habits of my own vision, in order to see seeing more clearly, that I have undertaken this work.

Filmography: 

(All films 16mm unless otherwise noted) 

MY BAD’S SO GOOD – feature work in progress (16mm – DCP)

LAND OF NOT KNOWING – 72 minutes – 2016 (16mm – DCP)

BLINDING – 72 minutes – 2011. (16mm - HDCAM SR)

DEAD TIME – 80 minutes – 2005. (16mm - 35mm)

SMACK - 55 minutes - 2000.AWAY - 58 minutes - 1996.

AWAY - 60 min. colour, sound (1996).

SWEETBLOOD - 13 minutes - 1993.

MEXICO - 35 minutes - 1992.

SANG SONG - 2 minutes -1991.

RHYTHMS OF THE HEART - 43 minutes - 1990.

WOODBRIDGE - 32 minutes - 1985.

FULL MOON DARKNESS - 85 minutes - 1983.

EVER LAST - 2 minutes - 1981.

NO MIME GAME - 4 minutes - 1980.