Movies: Emily Vey Duke

A terrible virus finally brings down the internet, and humans look out from the wreckage in the aftermath. Five weigh in with personal recollections: pensive, disbelieving, grieving, philosophical. We used to have movie stars and famous musicians. N...

A darkly comic film that follows a woman through a life characterized by damage, loss, humour and joy. With a score that follows the span of her life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film is narrated by performers who r...

The Infernal Grove is an unsystematic structural analysis of drug use, addiction and recovery (not necessarily in that order). It is anti-carceral, anti-prohibition and seeks to amplify the voices of radical harm-reductionists and their coalitions....

Lesser Apes tells the story of a love affair between a primatologist, Farrah and a female bonobo ape, Meema. Bonobos are the species with which humans share the most DNA, but unlike our species, they are matriarchal, live without conflict, and are u...

Semi-autobiographical, experimental narrative film tells the story of a woman growing up battling mental and emotional disability, but with a powerful drive for greatness. Based on stories from the lives of artists and friends, the work proceeds thro...

“Here is Everything appears as a message from The Future, as narrated by a cat and a rabbit. The two spiritual guides have decided to address humans via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our highest form of communication. Th...

“What would another world look like, one that is carried by this feeling of empathy, of mutual love between humans and animals, between species? How would our relationship with a largely domesticated nature and environment change? How would establish...

Based on dreams (waking and non-waking) by pals and acquaintances of noted American writer Lucy Corin, the night after the epochal US election of 2016. A bevy of speakers weigh in on the new world....

Presented in seven parts, Beauty Plus Pity considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children. While an animated cast of animal “spirit guides” quote Philip Larkin’s poem, This Be t...

Fourteen year old bone collector Maxine Rose is looking for validation from her heroes. These include primatologist Jane Goodall, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and New Zealand teen pop star Lorde....

Funny, touching and ambitious in scope, Bad Ideas continues to deal with many of the themes addressed in Duke and Battersby’s earlier works: addiction, spirituality, identity, relationship dynamics and the ongoing quest for joy....

Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice. Irony implies brittleness...

Episodic in nature, Curious About Existence reacts ultimately against an uninspired but prevailing acceptance of moral terms. It begins with a song of worship, an ode to the looming nastiness of our organic existence. A celebration of disorder and en...

In The Fine Arts, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby mock their own lack of inspiration: a woman confesses that she’s speaking French in the nude because she has no good ideas but admits that her solution is unoriginal. "I hate the fine arts, I am d...