The luckless, the infirm, and the borderline mad inhabit grim residence hotels where poverty and disappointment are as predictable as the peeling paint. Canadian Donigan Cumming travels the halls of these hotels, not as a stranger or voyeur, but as a cohort, sharing in the abject heroism of everyday life. His fascinating video works are tales of woe and comedy whose improvised style confounds the boundaries of drama and documentation. Cumming prods, interrogates, and cajoles his subjects, capturing their tenacious dignity, creating a theater of the down-and-out. In Cut the Parrot (40 mins), Albert has died. We never see him, but his absence is felt in the residue of his life, a final cigarette burn in the linoleum, and in the elegies of his friends. In After Brenda (41 mins) loss again colors the mood. Pierre has lost everything for love. Now rootless, he has nothing to offer but his painful tale. Cumming always returns to heartbreak and disorder, the underpinnings of life near the bottom. Central too are the bodies of his subjects, bodies that brazenly display the ravages of time. A favorite at the New York Video Festival, Donigan Cumming looks where most turn away.-Steve Seid