Spotting Layton Synopsis: Spotting Layton is an homage to the octogenarian Canadian poet Irving Layton. A beat meditation that attempts to correlate the life and subsequent decline of the poet (Layton), the "Poet" as cultural icon, "Poetry", as a means of human expression, and the continuing decline of Montreal as Canada's leading cultural centre. Spotting Layton was filmed on black and white, 16mm film, on the streets of Montreal and in old sound studios. The film is a performance record of the poem "Spotting Layton" as recited by Writer/Performer Tony R. Babinski. This recitation is inter-cut with images that explore and define the destruction and emasculation of the poet and the city. Religion, technology, the electronic age of mediated images, and the hegemony of the computer are challenged and confounded in an ultimate synthesis of the banal and the horrific. Enjoy!   Leonard, Light My Cigarette!! Synopsis: "Leonard, light my cigarette", is an experimental marriage of poetry, sound sculpture, and fragmented visual narrative that examines the artistic and personal impact of Canada's best-known poet. The film addresses three major themes or conceits and it does so on the level of text and spoken word (poetry, graphics) as well as on the level of sub-text (music, sound sculpture, editing structure, and colour scheme). These themes are; the poet/performer Leonard Cohen as cultural pop icon and artist. the survival of poetry as it moves off the page into comprehensive interdisciplinary art. the effects of the past on the present. On the level of text, it is a poem, one that is spoken, but also read on numerous iconographic images that appear throughout the film. These graphics take the form of 1960's "pop" style commercial art. At times, characters within the film appear to recite parts of the poem but with the voice of the principle narrator.Other times, their own voices are be foremost. Accompanying the recitation is a complex music track that alternately pays homage to the Cohen musical oeuvre, and undermines it by a process of comic deconstruction. The music is counter-pointed by a complex voice/sound montage built upon the common Montreal expression, "Everyone has a Leonard Cohen story". Visually the film addresses notions of past and present and the effects of one on the other. It achieves this through an exact colour strategy based on the use of two radically distinct colour film stocks. Those parts of the film dealing with the past and memory were shot on Eastman Kodak Ektachrome VNF 7240 - this is a reversal stock that has a soft, low contrast, pastel-like palette and refers in character and quality to faded magazine advertisements. These images are counter-pointed with those shot on Eastman Kodak Kodachrome 40.During the filming judicious use of additive colour gels pushed the already excellent colour saturation inherent in the Kodachrome film even further. The result are scenes and images that have a hyper-real quality. This strategy forms a perceptible colour code designed to affect the viewer and test current NTSC broadcast standards for transmission.   ...the love rack... Synopsis: The D.J. is a lost soul in the cold, cruel city. Once he was a popular, day-time, A.M. radio host with the top-rated morning show, but bad breaks and bad gambling habits have relegated him to an all-night, fringe radio station where he haunts the city playing the music of his hero, the Prince of the Mambo, Beny More. The Enchantress is a young woman, a Mambo dancer between engagements, an opportunist with a face of an angel and a heart of ice. Together they conspire to rob a bank by getting someone on the inside to open the vault for them. The bank looks impenetrable but it has one weak link. The Banker has been betrayed by life itself. Told as a boy that goodness comes to those who persevere and wait, The Banker has waited and waited in vain until hope has soured to bitter anguish. The Banker sees The Enchantress as his way out...or is she really the way down? Only by putting himself on the rack of her passion will he know.   Dancing About Architecture Project Description: Dancing About Architecture is a film inspired by the work and thought of former Montrealer Moishe Safdie. It is an homage in music, poetry and dance to the his architectural theory and to his seminal project: Habitat 67. Habitat ’67 is a landmark creation encapsulating the three main principles that inform Safdie's architecture: a deep understanding of Purpose, a taking into account of Tectonics, and deep experience of Place. In Habitat, one also sees a playing out of four of the five major personal themes that imbue Safdie's architecture: Gardens, Steps, Sites and Building blocks. The spirit of Expo 67 -and, by extension, Habitat itself-is to bring together people from all corners of the globe and walks of life. In that spirit, Dancing About Architecture features ethnic dancers indulging in a contemporary tribal ritual that reflects Montreal's rich cultural. As they dance the architecture itself becomes plastic, organic challenging notions of rigidity and scale. As in previous mtl/ART films, worlds collide. Ethnic cultures. Architecture and Techno Music. High and Art and Low. In the end, they are united in a single vision. (Click here to see a RealPlayer clip .)   Feature-Film Projects In Development Beautiful Losers When Leonard Cohen saw Leonard, light my Cigarette!, he asked us to if we would like to adapt his 1960s novel, Beautiful Losers. In July of 1999, we completed work on the screenplay. It is currently in development with Milk and Honey Films in Los Angeles. The Love Rack In February, 2000, we completed a working draft of a feature film script inspired by The Love Rack. The project is currently in development.