Colin Campbell Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Colin Campbell
Directing
Biography
Colin Campbell was born in Reston, Manitoba in 1942. He gained his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1966 and his Masters of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate School in California in 1969. After completing his education, he returned to Canada to teach at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he stayed until 1972 – a watershed year in Campbell’s artistic development. As one of the pioneers of video art in Canada, Toronto based artist Colin Campbell has had an international career that parallels the development of video art. Originally a sculptor, Campbell was first introduced to video in 1972, as the technology was beginning to emerge. “For me, video’s appeal lay in its potential for theatricality, performance and narrative,” said Campbell in Now Magazine. “The first subject of those things was myself. Gradually I started to turn the camera outward, developing characters and personae much different from my own.” Campbell avoids slick television style video production in favour of his highly developed grass roots style, which Bruce Ferguson has called the “aesthetics of poverty.” Campbell’s narratives explore gender-bending scenarios, rich with humour and pathos. In his exploration of gender stereotypes, Campbell has consistently kept to informal styles and scripts, cheap and homespun sets, and a cast often made up of himself and friends, including Ferguson, artists Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars, and fellow video veteran Lisa Steele. His approach was perhaps best described by Adele Freedman in Toronto Life: “Campbell is the kind of romantic who can sense tragic potential in a package of Kraft dinner.”
Filmography Movies
Acting
Sackville, I'm Yours
An amusing portrait of an Art Star, toughing it out in rural New Brunswick, Canada.
Say Cheese for a Trans-Canadian Look
Luc Bourdon, Marc Paradis and Simon B. Robert are curators for a selection of Canadian video to be presented within the context of the 13th Montréal International Festival of New Cinema and Video. This tape relates their experiences and research which occurs during their journey across Canada. This document is less a documentation of the trip than a logical suite to the questions raised in a previous work, Scheme vidéo. Focusing on the displacement of the three curators, the tape reflects their perceptions through the random capture of images. With Paul Wong, Grant Poier, Nida Home Doherty, Jerry Kissel, John Greyson and Collin Campbell.
Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers
Documentary about the ten days the director spent in Moscow, during the 1986 Moscow Youth Festival, as kind of a gay delegate.
I'm a Voyeur
An ironic flip/flop between voyeur/exhibitionist tendencies, where the subject is the object-they are one and the same person exploring the necessarily cooperative choreography implicit in such a relationship. The tape title, finally, is a misnomer. A tease. It should be called 'I'm an exhibitionist,' however, this is subverted by making the viewer complicit with the 'voyeur' of the title of the tape.
Bad Girls
A sequel to Modern Love, Bad Girls chronicles the rise and fall of Robin and Heide at the Cabana Room as a two-woman band called Robin and the Robots. They are terrible and become an overnight success. The worldly European, Heide, becomes a cocaine addict, but plays her cards right, keeps her mouth shut, and becomes the new (solo) Diva of the Cabana Room with an avant-garde swastika and combat-gear skinhead act. Robin does talk shows (and gets sued), has a lesbian affair with her manager, the fascistic Ms. Susan (and gets burned), and finally does a nude photo session (and gets fired).
Dangling by Their Mouths
A 60 minute tape that tells in flash-form the story of a European critic and her relationship to three people; her lesbian lover who died of cancer, a Canadian / director in theatre, and a young performance artist who adopts her persona in a performance. The issue deals with sexual roles, love relationships and women's views of themselves in social/sexual relationships with women and men.
Modern Love
Modern Love is the story of Xerox operator, Robin, who falls in love with a sleazy show business type named Lamont Del Monte. Their disastrous love affair is paralleled by a frustrating relationship between Heidi (who only speaks German) and Pierre (who only speaks French).
Black and Light
The two central characters are breaking up. Moira flees to Paris; Stan goes up north with gay writer friend, Timothy. Moira returns and joins Stan and Timothy up north to sort things out. Roberta, Stan's old friend also arrives. The next 24 hours reveal the assortment of tensions, expectations, humour and discontents of four people experiencing the difficult transition to middle age. The four characters return to Toronto to resume their separate lives.
Zero Patience
The ghost of "patient zero", who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural history Museum, is trying to organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum's "Hall of Contagion".
Fascination
“In order to take the next step (not forward or backwards, but only: to go on) it is often necessary to lean on a picture made by someone else, sometimes a word will do, a gesture, the look on a stranger’s face. Colin Campbell made the next step possible for me so I took up a video camera (his pictures were my company, and my camera accompanied his pictures). Between his images of the past and mine, Colin Campbell emerged as a Cold Warrior, as an artist who would fight the Cold War with stereo. Yes, a stereo artist! Fascination contains only the pictures I would find in my camera when I reviewed the material in the morning, after all the serious work had been done (while I and all the others who spoke his language, lay sleeping).” MH
Production
Urinal
A mystery man brings together a group of dead, gay artists to investigate a police response to the dilema of wash-room sex in Toronto. The artists have seven days in which to report on the ethics of police tactics. The artists infiltrate the police only to discover that they themselves are under surveillance as a political subversive group. The artists explore and report on the evolution of toilets and wash-room behavior.
Snip, Snip
Mary Brown, the head of Ontario's Censor Board, spends an afternoon with the gals cut, cut, cutting.
Sackville, I'm Yours
An amusing portrait of an Art Star, toughing it out in rural New Brunswick, Canada.
Sackville, I'm Yours
An amusing portrait of an Art Star, toughing it out in rural New Brunswick, Canada.
Skin
Skin is not a documentary, but an evocative and moving dramatization of women coming to terms with the pandemic that is AIDS. The metaphoric voice of the skin provides a counterpoint as four women talk about how AIDS has disrupted their lives. Brenda and Hedde courageously address the isolation and stigma of their personal lives when they go public as People Living With AIDS (PLWAs). Ann and Lucille confront (through each other), the complex social, cultural and medical agendas surrounding women and AIDS. In Skin, women speak powerfully and urgently of their experience with AIDS, their voices breaking through the silence of neglect created by the media.
He's a Growing Boy, She's Turning Forty
Two main characters, a young gay man, and his female (heterosexual) boss exchange stories about their personal problems, (his difficulties about being gay, and his fears about losing his job because of it). She talks of her neglectful husband whom she suspects is having an affair with another woman.
He's a Growing Boy, She's Turning Forty
Two main characters, a young gay man, and his female (heterosexual) boss exchange stories about their personal problems, (his difficulties about being gay, and his fears about losing his job because of it). She talks of her neglectful husband whom she suspects is having an affair with another woman.
Skin
Skin is not a documentary, but an evocative and moving dramatization of women coming to terms with the pandemic that is AIDS. The metaphoric voice of the skin provides a counterpoint as four women talk about how AIDS has disrupted their lives. Brenda and Hedde courageously address the isolation and stigma of their personal lives when they go public as People Living With AIDS (PLWAs). Ann and Lucille confront (through each other), the complex social, cultural and medical agendas surrounding women and AIDS. In Skin, women speak powerfully and urgently of their experience with AIDS, their voices breaking through the silence of neglect created by the media.
Skin
Skin is not a documentary, but an evocative and moving dramatization of women coming to terms with the pandemic that is AIDS. The metaphoric voice of the skin provides a counterpoint as four women talk about how AIDS has disrupted their lives. Brenda and Hedde courageously address the isolation and stigma of their personal lives when they go public as People Living With AIDS (PLWAs). Ann and Lucille confront (through each other), the complex social, cultural and medical agendas surrounding women and AIDS. In Skin, women speak powerfully and urgently of their experience with AIDS, their voices breaking through the silence of neglect created by the media.
I'm a Voyeur
An ironic flip/flop between voyeur/exhibitionist tendencies, where the subject is the object-they are one and the same person exploring the necessarily cooperative choreography implicit in such a relationship. The tape title, finally, is a misnomer. A tease. It should be called 'I'm an exhibitionist,' however, this is subverted by making the viewer complicit with the 'voyeur' of the title of the tape.
Gallery
