Artist in Person

Who says life doesn't comply with genre? In After Brenda (1997, 41 mins) Donigan Cumming plucks romance from the dustbin of broken hearts, creating a topsy-turvy soap opera. Pierre, a fiftysomething fellow who has been betrayed by the ways of love, is our unintentional leading man. Now rootless, he has nothing to offer but his painful tale, which he liberally imparts, of a love lost and along with it his worldly goods. But proportion humbles all: Pierre shares his woes in a world where woe is the currency of exchange. At best we discover that Brenda may not love Pierre, but misery does love company. Colin is an altogether different case: the well-medicated protagonist of Erratic Angel (1998, 50 mins) has the unerring company of his own obsessions, particularly the buzz of self-analysis. A "wet brain" at age twenty-five, he slogged through various addictions, arriving at the ancient age of fifty, wiser but weary. "I'm living in a death trance," he says, while outside an ice storm turns the trees to crystal.

—Steve Seid

• Interspersed throughout: Shelter (1999, 3:22 mins), Karaoke (1998, 3 mins), Four Storeys (1999, 2:04 mins), Trip (1999, 2:11 mins).(Total running time: 102 mins plus discussion, Beta SP, From the artist)