VIDEOPOEMS

 

Bushwack

 

How to Remain

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Purple Lipstick

Heather’s videopoem Purple Lipstick still garners kudos having been an official selection at the VideoBardo 2nd International VideoPoetry Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 3rd Zebra International Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, Germany and the Women in Film Festival in Vancouver where she was a guest speaker. Purple Lipstick also screened at Commfest, Wildsound, Female Eye in Toronto, Northwest Projections and Reel to Real in Seattle.

Purple is the colour of a fresh bruise and domestic violence the single greatest cause of injury to women in Canada. Purple Lipstick confronts its insidious nature through compelling juxtapositions. A disembodied female voice employs vivid language, absurdist against a backdrop of banality, images of *normal* family life. Numb in her isolation and still in her nurse's uniform, a wife and mother prepares dinner. The inherent terror of her home life is invoked with excruciating tension. Its brutality can only be alluded to.

Shot on Bowen Island near Vancouver, Purple Lipstick features actors Bazil Graham, Ripley Ferguson, Cairo Ferguson and slam poetry star Alexandra Oliver-Basekic. New Filmmakers in New York City screened it last fall and it’s been selected as well by the Vibgyor Short and Documentary Film Festival in Kerala, India, FemFest in Zagreb, Pause & Play International Film Festival—United Arab Emirates, Electric Rats Dream Video Dreams in Celje, Slovenia, the NoBudget Film & Video Festival in Heilbronn, Germany, Festival Miden, Kelemata, Greece, the 9th International Panorama of Independent Filmmakers in Patras, Greece and the European Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck, Germany, from 2000 entries.

The video, with its effective and creative use of lighting and focus suggesting much that isn't visible, is more tightly located within the family dynamics, sometimes counter pointing images in the poem voice-over, sometimes emphasizing the poem. Overall, this is a powerful short film.” -Joe Blades

Purple Lipstick creates a kind of hypnosis, like watching a bug climb up a web towards impending doom and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Thank you for not showing the end. The horror was worse in my mind."-George Aguilar, Cine-Poetry Festival

A mother and child hide behind a tree in the dark, in Purple Lipstick by Heather Haley
Purple Lipstick

Full Video - Hi Res 19.6MB


Purple Lipstick

Full Video - Low Res 3.8MB

TFT: 6 minutes

Director: Heather Haley
Director of Photography: Shawn Chappelle
Editors: Shawn Chappelle, Roderick Shoolbraid, Andrew Ranford
Score & Sound Design: Roderick Shoolbraid
Executive Producer: Josef Roehrl
Actors:
Alexandra Oliver-Basekic
Bazil Graham
Ripley Ferguson
Cairo Ferguson


Dying for the Pleasure

Excerpt - 1.3MB


Dying for the Pleasure

Full Video - 8.7MB

Dying for the Pleasure

Heather's first videopoem, Dying For the Pleasure, premiered at Pacific Cinémathèque in 2003. In recent years it has screened at the International ArtExpo in Milan, Italy, the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Kalingrad, Russia and at Illume: An Alchemy of Text and Image at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago where Heather made a panel appearance as well.

TFT: 10 minutes

It is presented here in Quicktime format. The full frame version is available for public broadcast.

Writer/Producer: Heather Haley

Director: Katrin Bowen Exec. Producer: Shawn Angelski

Actors: Dena Ashbaugh, Kyle Thiessen, Lisa Wallace, Katherine Wallace, Kasia Gruzdien, Randy Kramer