Film Categories: body

  • Emergence

    “Emergence” is a video installation created to counter the violence of blackface in its representation of Blackness. This piece re-asserts the beauty of Blackness and challenges the reductive nature of contemporary Canadian blackface through extreme close-ups of black faces in all their diversity. Shot in extreme slow motion and projected by two projectors at a large scale on two screens, the images appear to be stills at first, but reveal themselves over time to be moving. These parts of lips, noses, eyes, posit the face as a signifying landscape. Serene images contrast with others that depict faces and arms pressed…

  • Video Home System

    ‘Video Home System’ traces the convergence of popular culture and politics in Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s. This video showcases the connections between pop culture and nationalism, and how bootleg economies kept the cinema industry alive during periods of censorship. Image description: A young man sits at a desk behind a pile of VHS tapes, illuminated by a desk lamp. The wall behind him is vivid green.

  • POLYMORPH

    Through the lens of an experimental film this personal piece explores gender and one’s place within or without it. Using images of their body and sonographic visuals set to drone music, the director leads you through an identity in flux.

  • SHE IS THE OTHER GAZE

    Every encounter with an image, every interaction searches for its own form. SHE IS THE OTHER GAZE describes the encounter with female visual artists mostly of an older generation who were part of the Viennese art scene in the 1970s and were engaged in the women’s movement. In dialogue with the filmmaker and her camera they share early works and artistic practices. They remember how their self-determination evolved between artistic ambitions, economic constraints, adaptation and resistance to the prevailing patriarchal social structures. In their role as feminist pioneers the protagonists are a great influence on the contemporary art scene and…

  • Stripped

    Forget everything you heard and enter the world that many know of but know very little about. STRIPPED is the personal, untold story of Phylicia Carty, also known as Mz Lady Ice, whose life took her in the direction of becoming one of the most revolutionary urban exotic dancers in the Toronto adult entertainment industry. The enticing documentary showcases the struggles and triumphs that come with being a female stripper in a contemporary world that is now gaining mainstream acceptance. A multi-award winning short film, STRIPPED has received a total of 4 awards, 8 nominations and 3 official selections in…

  • Untitled

    A performance film consisting of a string of five slow motion portraits of a young woman. Each portrait varies in length and gesture as her myriad expressions invite our gaze. With each action performed in dead silence, stretched to the limits of voyeuristic levels of comfort, the simple act of looking is made fragile. A curious exchange is established between spectator, creator, and subject through a careful appropriation and reframing of social media conventions and advertising iconography transposed into a cinematic space—pointing to a cycle of regressive media consumption.

  • BLU In YOU

    Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and…

  • 16 Reasons Why I Hate Myself

    Matthew Lancit’s 16 Reasons Why I Hate Myself wryly plays with the concept of selfhood, traversing themes such as neuroticism, introspection and self-denigration. By allowing us an intimate look at sixteen of his supposed personal flaws from the physical to the psychological, Lancit posits the idea that we do not determine our identities but rather they determine us. (Sullivan+Strumpf Gallery)

  • Small Fish

    Laurie is an artist who wants nothing more than to become a professional painter. She paints beautiful fish but when her paintings don’t sell she is overwhelmed by the rejection and the feeling that she will never be successful. Losing her sense of self and artistic voice, this is when things get fishy. With the help of a fellow artist, she tries to find her way through this vast ocean too big for such a small fish.