On the Day the World Begins Again (2019) Co-directed with Armand Garnet Ruffo. 4 minutes. HD
This poetry video, based on a poem by Armand Garnet Ruffo, is included in the anthology film Who Is Bruce Kauffman?, which explores and celebrates Kingston, Ontario’s vibrant poetic community through the eyes of a poet impresario who manages to be both ubiquitous and elusive. Eight of the city’s most accomplished film makers collaborated with eight of Kingston’s finest poets to interpret their poems in short cinematic pieces. This movie premiered at the 2019 Kingston Canadian Film Festival.
Revolution Begins at Home (2016) Producer-director. 90 minutes. HD video.
Archival documentary on radical left politics in Toronto in 1969-70, using my own family’s membership in a Maoist group as the central story. This work is really addressed to a new generation of activists who may not be aware of the history of radicalism in Canada.
Featured at the 2017 ReFrame Documentary Film Festival in Peterborough, Ontario
Til the Cows Come Home (2014) Producer-story editor. 58 minutes. HD video.
Combining footage captured in 2010 with new interviews and archival material, this documentary shows how Kingstonians tried to stop the closing of the 100-year-old Frontenac Institution Prison Farm. The film ends with the two-day standoff between protesters and police in front of the prison. The budget was crowd-sourced primarily from Kingston residents.
Selected Screenings:
23 June, 2014 – Premiere at The Screening Room in Kingston,
24 Jan. 2015 – ReFrame Film Festival, Peterborough, ON
8 Apr. 2015 – Cinema Politica screening in Montreal, PQ
2 June 2015 – Cinema Politica screening at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto, ON
New Season Coming (2008) Producer-director. 22 minutes. HD video.
Produced for the Head Office of the National Farmers Union on the rapidly expanding local food movement in Kingston. Four undergraduate students worked as videographers, a sound recordist and an editor. The video premiered, with great success, at the National Farmers Union AGM in Saskatoon in mid-November. It also screened in Kingston at the very beginning of December at a conference of local, independent farmers to kick off a new farm apprenticeship program. Several other festival and conference screenings followed.
Eyes in the Back of Your Head (2003) Producer-editor. 33 minutes. SD video.
Premiered at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Nov. 25-30, 2003.
In the spring of 2003 I was commissioned to create a new work for the Kingston Insights Project (KISS). This innovative community arts initiative was funded by the Ontario Arts Council and Kingston’s Healthy Community Fund. Local artists worked with participants from ten different communities, loosely defined, to create photography-based works using pictures taken by non-artist community members. I worked with former inmates from three of the eight prisons in the Kingston area. The final work is a series of sequences that tell stories and make arguments made up of still photographs taken by each the participants. Eyes in the Back of Your Head is now used by the Elizabeth Fry and John Howard Societies to stimulate discussion of prison justice issues across Canada.
Screenings: Many prisoners rights film festivals and Free Speech TV in the U.S.A.
Disrobing the Emperor: The New Commons in Mexico (2000) Producer-director. 60
minutes. Video.
Gustavo Esteva gave up a good job with the Mexican government thirty years ago to become a spokesperson for the poorest of Mexico’s poor. In this video he shows us three very different marginal communities that have build a “new commons,” by rejecting conventional notions of development and globalization. A rural native village and two barrios in downtown Mexico City have slowly learned to combine the best parts of their traditions with selected aspects of modernity to produce a resilient local culture that challenges the most sacred principles of modern corporatism.
“Unlike many academics of good will (and a few of not such good will) Clarke Mackey does not set out to teach Mexicans who or what they are. He does not set out to “conquer” a problem of underdevelopment. He does what so few have done: he gives Mexicans (upper-class, middle-class, lower-class, and particularly the unclassified) an audience and he helps us watch and listen, helps us learn, helps us see our own underdevelopment.”
— Daniel Chamberlain, Head of the Department of Spanish and Italian, Queen’s University
Many university screenings including in a course called “Beyond Development and Globalization: Autonomous Movements, Indigenous Knowledges, and Food Sovereignty in Latin America,” York University, 20 June 2008.
Clarke Mackey 