Gelene

…is an avant-garde filmmaker based in Toronto, ON

Here’s his latest film

“…For me its more like assembling a jigsaw puzzle that hasn’t been made yet. I don’t have all the pieces and I’m trying to build these pieces, and the pieces come out of some interest, or desire, or willingness to explore these particular areas.

Some people would say they never want to make a film like that. It’s like I never have a clear idea what I’m doing until I’m half way through it, and I really don’t know what my films are about until they’re pretty well half done, because they’re just collections of stories or images. It’s probably not the smoothest way to proceed, but I always like the explorative element of that. I always like the discovery element of it, because I feel like I’m not predisposed to writing an idea that I think I can work with throughout. I think I might start writing about red and end up with green, or I might start writing about wood and end up with steel. I’ve always tried to follow that. I’ve always tried to follow certain things that are important and through that I’ve tried to decipher some kind of code…”

– Steve Sanguedolce

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His films talk about really heavy stuff: depression, suicide, addiction, crime, inequality… along with the social and psychological effects and factors that play in the equation.  He would interview people, get them to tell their stories and weave them together as if they were related or he would find connections.  He already has a ton of footage but he randomly just shoots when it feels right type thing or sometimes he goes out to shoot for specific scenes on purpose but before the video is cut, the audio comes in first: he would weave the story together and form a composition out of it.  

The weird-looking footages are processed in a really trippy way: he shoots stuff, takes the negatives, soaks them in toner and then develops it.  His works are visually stunning but the way the stories unfold… are not for the faint of heart. 

Having said that, he usually reveals redeeming qualities from the anguish.

I guess that quote by Carl Jung really applies to his works, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Check out Steve’s site here