Patrick Pittman

“Maybe this May will be the last of the bad months before things start to get better.” May Flowers captures one month in the life of Toronto during pandemic times, just as the city is about to emerge from a period of maddening isolation—and one of the longest emergency lockdowns in the world. A feature length documentary, co-directed by me and Chris Frey.

In production. In collaboration with Dr. Alexander Cullen, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Cambridge, an ethnographic documentary on the crucial role played by music in East Timor’s independence movement (1970-1999).

Featuring contemporary interviews with leaders from Timor’s musical underground, many of whom suffered imprisonment and torture at the hands of the occupying Indonesian military, and whose songs, though banned from official airwaves, were circulated throughout the country by illegal audio cassettes and pirate radio, often mixed in with messages from Timorese resistance leader Xanana. Currently in production.

Currently in production. A feature-length documentary co-directed with Chris Frey on the scary-strange world of the Canadian cult author and commentator Derek McCormack, about whose writing Edmund White once said, “the mystery of objects, the lyricism of neglected lives, the menace and nostalgia of the past—these are all ingredients in McCormack’s weird and beautiful parallel universe.”