Current/Circulated Works
The links provided are intended for preview purposes and should not be used for exhibition.
Please contact me or the distributer of my work if you would like access to complete films for viewing or exhibition.
email: [email protected]
instagram: @charlie_egleston
​distributer: cfmdc.org
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Garden Work (16 min., HD video, 2024)
​Garden Work imbues the structural cues of a botanic garden and deploys the concept of divine proportion through the form of its making. Compositional prompts are derived from phi, while shot duration adheres strictly to numbers from Fibonacci. In this space, and in the realm of untouched nature, order thrives with physical characteristics that share the same structural roots. Despite the endeavour to classify and to control, the work posits that everything, in time, moves toward entropy and dissolution.

Family Portrait #4 (5 min., S8mm optically printed to 16mm, digital transfer, 2021)
An introspective meditation on family life during a succession of traumas. Original music composed and performed by Rhaia Egleston. The 4th film from an ongoing series spanning 2001 to the present, that explores expanded forms of ‘home mode’ moving image making. The works move from analytical views of familial imaging to the deeply personal, often reworking film and video mediums to elevate emotional and conceptual frameworks. Camera original S8mm footage was optically printed and blown up to 16mm to achieve all inherent effects. All footage was hand-processed.

HE SAID/SHE SAID (5 min., 16mm, 2021)
HE SAID / SHE SAID incorporates a series of reaction shots, repurposed from 16mm found films, to create an echo chamber of shot-reversals. The exchange of gazes evoke concern and anxiety through gendered and racialized undercurrents inherent in the original films. The footage was edited into a single film print through the use of an optical printer, expired hi-con film stock, and handprocessing.

Watch Tower (Parts 1-7, 23 min., HD video, 2017) Preview Clip
Structured in seven parts, each segment considers the impact a transmission beacon relays into its surrounding environment. Watch Tower acknowledges the act of watching through an acute awareness of how form influences perception while also observing the communications and time-keeping properties of the subject.

L'Emergere Del Posible: Review of Watch Tower by Francesca Rusalen
http://emergeredelpossibile.blogspot.ca/2017/09/watch-tower.html
​English translation here (thank you Cristina Ionica!)​

Watershed (9 min., 16mm, sound, 2014) Preview Clip
A watershed moment invites an exploration of perception and the transitory nature of things. Using the multiple meanings of a watershed basin, moment and the literal ‘watershed’, the film is deceivingly simple but unfolds layers of meaning concerning images, representation and ontology.

"Beautiful frames, the upside down/sideways images, the open and close reiteration/framing shots are [...] a very incisive evocation of this place. The sensitivity to light, to small movements, keeping it all tied to the structure, the container of sight and experience."  - Mike Hoolboom

​Note: This film is intended to be viewed projected from the 16mm film print.

Second Phase (12:40 min., 16mm, sound, 2012) Preview Clip
In recording the volatility and liquid nature of what appears to be solid, Second Phase exists as the discovery of form through process and quietly observes a community space that remains constant amongst all the things that pass through it.
"Immediately recognizable to locals, Victoria Park is rendered as a fluid social space whose purpose transforms along with the seasons. Egleston films his own family in this familiar space, framing the tenuous first steps of a toddler and the self-assured poses of adolescents to reaffirm the adaptability and resilience of coming generations." - Samuel La France
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​Note: This film is intended to be viewed projected from the 16mm film print.

SEE/SAW (5 min., 16mm, silent, 2010) Preview Clip
A film about seeing and having seen. Completely handprocessed and painstakingly edited, ‘SEE/SAW’ is comprised of a series of iris fades, commonly found in silent films to signal the beginning or end of a scene – here appropriated as a formal approach that frames the desire to see and to remember. Dichotomies surface in the high contrast images – opening/closing, beginning/end, light/dark...

"how suggestive it is [...] of memory and loss and attempts to hold onto things seen/experienced - the technique and editing and choice of type of film work so well together - and funny how I only before thought of teeter-totters as See/Saws - that is movement up  and down but not as mental/feeling motion too, and not at all as tenses of the verb ‘see’ and so present and past. Wonderful!" - Barbara Sternberg

"SEE/SAW is a masterpiece. Wow." - Mike Hoolboom

​Note: This film is intended to be viewed projected from the 16mm film print.

The Consequence of Being Here (23 min., 7 parts, 16mm, various video formats, on video, 2008.) Preview Work 
A cycle of work comprised of seven parts, The Consequence of Being Here expresses an expanded understanding of personal experience and family life by reimagining home mode image production. It is intended to critically address traditional representations of family by engaging the familial realm through a phenomenological framework which encounters birth, death, and life equally, and as processes intertwined within each other.

Family Portrait #3 (5 min., DV, sound, 2007)
An experiment in circuit bending using gutted analogue video effects generators, this work is the third in the series of family portrait films and videos which critically explore 'home mode' imaging practices. In this work the seemingly stable and pristine surface of familial representation is disrupted by the 'flaws' generated by repurposed circuitry. 

Family Portrait #2 (5 min., 16mm, sound, 2007) Preview Clip
An ultrasound recording of my first-born's heartbeat...the intensity of childbirth...a family portrait. Form is altered through lens manipulation, optical printing and hand-processing to elicit the polarities and fragility of life.

Note: This film is intended to be viewed projected from the 16mm film print.

Star of the Town (20 min., DV, sound, 2007)
Throughout the 1940's, the late Rev. Roy Massecar travelled throughout Southwestern Ontario with his 8mm Bolex to document the many small towns and their residents. Throughout his 'Stars of the Town' project he recorded over 80 of these towns, returning to each one to project the images he had made there. This hybrid documentary serves to document this astonishing archive of moving images. This work was commissioned by the University of Western Ontario Archives, which hold Massecar's films.

Still Life (7 min., 16mm, sound, 2006) Preview Clip
A loose narrative comprised of both found and shot footage derails conventional uses of familial images and forms the residue of a looming traumatic experience. The anxieties of parenthood feed an undertow of tension that heightens awareness to the vulnerabilities of the children we bring into this world.

Note: This film is intended to be viewed projected from the 16mm film print.

Hunter-Gatherer (14 min., 16mm + S8mm + Slides on DV, sound, 2003)
A traditional slide show disintegrates into fragmentary forms. Using re-photographic methods that mimic the mechanics of recollection, the artist’s family slide images are reframed, distorted and hand-processed. An attempt to grasp a personal memory surrounding the taking of the originals.

Travel Film (8 min., S8mm on DV, sound, 2001)
The artifacts of filmed footage, photographs and postcards are used to construct a personal travelogue that consciously misrepresents the empirical truth of their contents. All of the picture and sound elements contained in this work were collected on the filmmaker’s travels.

Family Portrait #1 (3 min., DV, sound, 2001)
Through the process of re-photography and the combination of repurposed narration and imagery, the first Family Portrait piece in the series deconstructs the roots of familial language which is further transposed onto the structure of family itself.