LAND OF NOT KNOWING
– 72 minutes – 2016.
"In this bold new experimental documentary, four artists talk about suicide: the role the recurring thought has played in their life and art, the struggle to understand and overcome the impulse, and the ongoing confrontation with a form of stigma that renders the very concept of suicide as a kind of pariah even among mental health issues and discussions. With a frankness that is both bracing and illuminating, Sanguedolce's subjects tell their stories, and the filmmaker responds with a striking visual scheme that permits us something rarely attempted in the engagement with this most misunderstood of conditions: a sense of first person understanding." Geoff Pevere 2016- RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FILM FESTIVAL
BLINDING – 72 minutes – 2011
"Vision, in all of its manifestations, permeates the disclosures of the three characters that journey us through the film: Jackie, a lesbian police officer grappling with corroding forces of perception both within and outside her profession; Jamie, for whom the horrors of the Rwandan genocide are tempered by the distance offered by technologies of the military industrial complex; and Ryan, who has progressively lost his sight, retaining just one per cent of vision in one eye. In attending to vision and its primacy in Western society, Sanguedolce materializes the traumas it inflicts, whether through the imperceptibility of truth and its subjective red herrings, obfuscations and blind-spots, or the moment where recognition changes you forever—often for the worse. Blinding couples the confessional intimacy of a documentary with a hypnotic panoply of hand dyed images, luring its audience into a compromise between visual skepticism and optical sumptuousness." PLEASURE DOME 2011
DEAD TIME – 35mm - 80 minutes – 2005.
DEAD TIME – 80 minutes – 2005. "From innovative filmmaker Steve Sanguedolce, comes the independent masterpiece DEAD TIME. DEAD TIME is the story of two sisters, Wendy and Julie, who grapple with drugs, crime, prostitution, family, and ultimately hope for their future. Always one careless step away from death, the sisters attempt survival in spite of major pitfalls in their lives. DEAD TIME follows Wendy’s turmoil through one failed marriage to Mark, followed by a relationship with convicted criminal Reg— a drug dealer into selling large quantities of cocaine, hash, and heroin. Julie on the other hand finds herself delving into all things taboo—prostitution, the porn industry, and excessive use of LSD. Like a house of cards ready to topple, their lives play out through a series of revelations and efforts to regain control over their inner worlds." Jason Beaudry, CINEFEST 2005
SMACK - 55 minutes - 2000.
"Smack takes Sanguedolce deeper into the tricks of biography, and further into risky terrain. For years one of the country’s most daring diary filmmakers, he ventures to smear the lines this time between real stories and made ones. Smack takes too-true stories of drugs , petty crime and generally wasted youth, and weaves them together into a story of three brothers. That’s the soundtrack. The images are another story. Smack marries its narration to a welter of scratched and hand-processed images. Tint and texture race all over the surface of the film, sometimes turning the most mundane pictures -- kids playing, a child in water, a guy prepping drugs - into non-stop, abstract canvases. This is an action movie of line and colour, with a homegrown Scarface plot burbling underneath. At times the match between image and narration is too direct for the film’s open style, but then there’s always another bit of beauty coming." Cameron Bailey, NOW Magazine 2000
SWEETBLOOD - 13 minutes - 1993.
"Perhaps the most evocative short film in the Toronto Festival of Festivals program is Steve Sanguedolce's Sweetblood which examines the strained relationship between the filmmaker and his emotionally detached father. A collage of family photographs and cryptic subtitles fills the screen while the voices of his family and his personal thoughts are heard. An emotionally stirring film in which the pain of unresolved family issues washes over the viewer." (Ingrid Randoja, NOW Magazine)
MEXICO - 35 minutes - 1992.
Co-directed with Mike Hoolboom
"The best experimental film from around the world not only displayed some new way of looking through cinema but something new at which to look at. Although its initial context is a languidly dystopic trip from Toronto to Monterey and back again, (Mexico's) true subject is power: the power inscribed in the unseeing gaze of the tourist, the power manifest in the recently signed North American Free Trade Agreement, under the auspices of which Mexican workers threaten to be divvied up by American and Canadian corporations tired of living wages, labour unions and environmental regulations." Mexico Oberhausen Best of Festival Award
AWAY - 58 minutes - 1996.
"One of the best films of this year's short film program, Sanguedolce's 59 minute movie is an audacious story that takes a unique journey into its own heart of darkness. With a nod to Francis Ford Coppola, Joseph Conrad and The Price is Right host Bob Barker, it's a story that has its own epic quality taking us from a small Sicilian village to the jungles of Thailand. Less sure directors might have lost control of a film with diverse influences such as these but Sanguedolce remains focused on the story of one man's search for a long-lost brother. And if the movie has a geographical and emotions sprawl, it remains touchingly intimate as we follow Steve (Earl Pastko) from his art-department job on Coppola's Apocalypse Now into the hinterlands of Southeast Asia in search of his brother. Intercut with scenes from the movie and Heart of Darkness, the documentary on its making, the film also manages a stop along the way at The Price is Right where Sanguedolce's father appeared as a charming and funny contestant. Part spoof and part saga, this is a film that's not without a unique sense of humor. And it proves Sanguedolce is one of the best young filmmakers in the country. It's a winner." Marc Horton - Edmonton Journal 1996
RHYTHMS OF THE HEART - 43 minutes - 1990.
"In Rhythms of the Heart, Steve Sanguedolce's affinity for expressionistic documentaries turns to the depiction of a ruined relationship. Rhythms of the Heart typifies many of the Escarpment School concerns in its blend of personal narrative and landscape, redrafting its romantic heritage in a love story that deconstructs narrative traditions even as it tears its characters apart. Sanguedolce insistently replays loss through a metaphorical landscape while tirelessly focusing on the personally domestic. The films' centre presents a myriad of visual enclosures such as sparsely lit studios, counter tops or framed bathrooms. The characters search throughout the film to find space within the maze of these settings which could allow them to live without the (Dionysian) dissolutions of sexual passion or the (Apollonian) dictates of the law." Mike Hoolboom
WOODBRIDGE - 32 minutes - 1985.
Woodbridge is a deeply personal expose of family life within the context of first generation Italian-Canadians. The film revolves around the journey of a boy from early childhood through adulthood. It highlights the conflicts of growing up in the space between two cultures with radically different customs and values. While this film documents the particular experiences of one child, it is a reflection of a sociological phenomenon common to many Canadian children. Woodbridge is different from most other documentary work primarily because the camera adopts the role of the protagonist. It presents the viewer with a multitude of images/experiences from a purely subjective point of view. The film's immediacy invites the audience to participate in the events directly, as opposed to the usual documentary experience of filmmaker as authority, audience as observer.