Being painfully aware of my intrusion and my obsession to confront what is not mine -what I do not own, I compile my desires in films that are both violent and beautiful in their depiction of external events. My films deal with the colouring that takes place when the camera is held to the eye, as well as what it means to record an event, carry it over and return to it later in an attempt to reshape it. To point a camera is to point back at oneself, thereby revealing one's own reality or shaping of experience. Recorded sounds and images are merely impostors of an internally informed reality. In the final analysis, filmmaking has more to do with who is behind the camera than in front of it. When I first begin a film, mm primary concern is with developing a process-oriented approach rather than working through any preconceived plan. Since my films are explorative in nature, the actual process of making the work is as important as the finished piece. This working method enables me not to take for granted the camera, choice of film stock, editing or sound, but rather, to work with them in an attempt to express and define my personal sensibilities toward the subject)s). This allows me the opportunity to interchange aesthetic principles that are common to image, sound and editing. A good example of this marriage is my work with rhythm that is expressed through my camera work, music and editing. In fact, my commitment to rhythm and music has given my work a pronounced musical quality in an attempt to create a new language - one that speaks of a personal ordering, devoid of the constricting chains of dominant "narrative" form.

Steve Sanguedolce belongs to the Escarpment School - a loosely knit group of filmmakers that includes the likes of Mike Cartmell, Marion McMahon, Rick Hancox, Gary Popovich and Philip Hoffman. Born and raised along the craggy slopes of the Canadian shield, their work typically cojoins memory and landscape in a home movie/documentary based production that is at once personal, poetic and reflexive. Inheritors of the 19th century Lake Poet romantics, "nature" is typically figured as a metaphor for consciousness, a visible hieroglyph of mind motion. Woven into their surround are images of a more personal sort- Hoffman's dying grandmother in passing through/torn formations, Popovich's family picnics in Elegy or McMahon's graduation ceremony in Nursing History. The Escarpment School is part of Canada's third generation of avant-garde filmmakers, a generation which has come of age in the late 80's. They have inherited both the increasing institutionalization/academicization of avant-garde film and the feeling of "coming too late" - or working after the canonized achievements of American "great works". As artists well versed in the history of their medium, their response has been two fold. The first is to take an active part in the shaping of their own destiny - many are teachers, administrators, board members of artist run centres/film co-ops and members of screening groups. The second has been the production of synthetic work that collages heterogeneous materials in a weave that strains a home movie manufacture through language. Their work often reflects on absence and death, typically contrasting the camera's movement through landscape in the present with a memory condemned to history. These pastoral sojourns make the simply visible into a sign for all that cannot be brought before the camera's even stare. It is at this point, between presence and absence, now and then, that the filmmaker enters, hoping to re-member the two in what may be regarded as both a celebration of a newly synthetic consciousness and a lament for all that's already passed.

The relationship between bodies and desire is among the oldest subjects in the cinema, underpinning its movement from music hall curiosity to causal narrative assembly. With the invention of 16mm film stock, movies took another kind of turn. Though primarily intended for military use, it allowed an avant-garde of a different sort to flourish, as well as a burgeoning interest in "home movies." Decades of these home-made flickers have passed and were those films to be joined end to end, they could easily circumnavigate the globe a dozen times or more, providing in their orbit a hitherto secret and alternative history of the movies. These first-person signatures have also found their place in the hands of artists whose domestic recollections shed new light on identity, memory, and naming. The homing instinct of the fringe has never been more acute than today, when a new generation has emerged to shape a transgressively personal work, exposing a once-private experience to the unblinking stare of the fringe's public. This emphasis on personal expression has marked the project of filmmaker Steve Sanguedolce, whose work continues to forge new links between movies and home.

Fringe Film in Canada: Mike Hoolboom

³Sanguedolce is a self-taught celluloid magician.² Gemma Files, eye Weekly

³Sanguedolce is one of the best young filmmakers in the country.² Mark Horton, Edmonton Journal

³For years one of the country¹s most daring diary filmmakers.² Cameron Bailey, NOW Magazine

³One of the most influential independent filmmakers in the Canadian scene. Marc Glassman, National Film Board

³Sanguedolce¹s work continues to forge new links between movies and home.² Mike Hoolboom, Fringe Film in Canada

³Sanguedolce has dedicated himself to making films about the darkest and most intimate moments of the person¹s self.² Angela Baldassarre, Tandem

³When the subject of distinctive Canuck auteurs comes up, the discussion usually exhausts itself after Cronenberg, Egoyan and Bruce MacDonald (and to a lesser extent Patricia Rozema) are talked about to death. And that's kind of sad, because we Canadians have our own gonzo filmmakers who warrant a piece in those discussions. One such person is Torontonian Steve Sanguedolce. ³ Adrian Lackey, Vue Weekly

³If processing and developing film was like a Betty Crocker recipe bake-off, Steve Sanguedolce would be the teenage contestant Gidget on crack.² Si Si Penaloza, L.I.F.T. newsletter