Chapter 1: BIOGRAPHY

“I began to think that if one life, somehow made into art, were recorded - not all of it, but like the testimony on an old tombstone - wouldn’t that be worth something?”
- Anne Sexton, poet

Aka Joey is responsible for a creating a breed of personal cinema that he calls, Docu-fessional. Docu-fessional films portray the reminiscences of unplanned encounters with significant experiences in life via contemporary film aesthetics. These works consist of personal revelatory confessions recorded by unconventional means (surveillance, video/micro-film archive, journals, hearing aids and toys) and read much like the entries found in a hidden personal diary. One is left with the question of, “What is truth and what is fiction?” The films take many forms, including physical stories arranged by peculiar/imagined biographies of fictitious persons, collections of found/anonymous photographs, found sound recordings, drawings and compositions from text journals.

Docu-fessional films offer no “immunity bubble”. These films believe that nothing bad can remain safe in a person’s life without the possibility for growth, insight and healing. The creative process involves a complete study and exploitation of the inner self. The elements of fact and fiction in narrative/documentary storytelling are imprecise and distorted, making the relationship between the filmmaker and the audience difficult to manage. In the end, the viewer is left learning how to acknowledge circumstance and cope.

What the press is saying
about Docufessional Films

"There's a long tradition, from Paganini to Robert Johnson, of performers whose art is so technically dazzling and so terrifying in its power that they're reputed to have sold their souls to the devils. Docu-fessional films proudly continues this lineage."
– San Francisco Chronicle

"The technique is quite staggering and would be an impressive end in itself, but AKA Joey is something of a cinematic terrorist with more than entertainment on his mind. He has strong political convictions and isn't afraid to go to the edge with them, and then leap off."
– The Australian

"He wields his narratives like a weapon. Passolini looks like a choirboy in comparison, That's not gravel in his story, it's broken glass."
– The Globe and Mail (Canada)

"This is devotional storytelling for a secular age."
– The Independent on Sunday (London)

"AKA Joey assembles an epic and timely meditation, like Picasso's Guernica, is simultaneously thrilling and horrifying ... Exquisite and furious, it's a dark testament to film's power to resist, protest, and bear witness."
– Magnet

reviews --->

Aka joey is also a social worker and incorporates his professional clinical experience directly into his art. aka joey’s films have screened extensively at internationally diverse venues and he is often invited to present and discuss the films in person.