Film Categories: Canada

  • Cave Small Cave Big

    “Cave Small Cave Big” is a magical and surreal short film written by five-year-olds Madeline Harker and Adelaide Schwartz. Made to respect the gravity of the material, the film jumps from character to character as they cope with the transience of ownership, capturing that moment in a young mind when new muscles are stretched to grapple with ideas about possession and loss.

  • Building History: The Story of Benjamin Brown

    A portrait of Toronto’s first practicing Jewish architect. Working at a time of anti-Semitism in the city, Benjamin Brown’s buildings stand as a testament to Toronto’s cultural and industrial history.

  • Inventory

    Often the very things that appear to enable a sense of security, stability, and status can be disrupted, or rendered obsolete, destined to become a memory, or simply just forgotten. On the other hand, things that frame our passions while informing our dreams have the very real potential of retaining their meaning, regardless of any actual or imagined externalities. Before leaving home last July to begin an artist residency I went to pick up a couple of things at a nearby big box store only to discover that it had been closed. A crew was removing all the signs on…

  • Velocity

    I generally gravitate towards places that reveal the many layers of time when deciding on a particular location to set up my camera and tripod. This is when I like to imagine worlds that have passed, worlds that are present, and worlds that are yet to be. In 2009 Johan Rockström led the team which developed the “Planetary Boundaries Framework,” a set of 9 boundaries that they define as a “safe operating space for humanity.” These scientists assert that once certain thresholds or tipping points are passed there is a risk of “irreversible and abrupt environmental change.” In 1976 a…

  • Utopia

    The purpose of this or that, or its role in enabling a sense of security or status is ephemeral, depending on factors that may or may not be readily apparent. As systems shift from one emphasis to an other, or as one system supplants an other, the meaning of something can be altered to such a degree that a new description may be required to understand its context. Various intersections in downtown Vancouver including the Trump Tower looming over the other buildings – Fishing Boat approaches Ucluelet after some time out at sea – Afternoon clouds, Crowsnest Mountain – Lonely…

  • The Uphill Battle: The Cost of Raising a Champion

    Karate and the Olympics: Who Will Represent Canada in 2020? This documentary highlights the difficulties experienced in creating champions in Ontario. For the past 20 years athletes have been faced with hardships created by stringent rules, underfunding, and a complete lack of understanding from “higher-ups.” Today karate faces a real challenge: How do we make the transition from an amateur sport to a professionally organized industry with an environment for raising true champions? We attempt to cover this issue in depth with interviews with people who are directly involved. “The Uphill Battle” is required viewing for anyone who believes karate…

  • Nachlass

    “Nachlass” is the German word for inheritance. It is also the word for posthumously published works. Most commonly, it is used to describe all the things, both the valuables and the junk, left behind in an apartment after its inhabitant has died. In Nachlass the everyday objects of a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada function as placeholders for all of the information that has gone missing between languages and cultures in the process of immigration. However, although this story at the turn of the century is one, which must operate beyond the realm of language, its continuation today in the Germany…

  • The House

    For one curler, it’s not just a regular night at the local curling rink. Can she face her fears and find the strength to throw her final rock?

  • Outcognito

    Fear meets gay desire against an audio background of sitcom homophobia and jarring personal testimonies. Textured layers of figures, rotoscoped and real, move in and out of difficult scenarios, resolving into knowing acceptance.

  • Royal Jelly

    The film begins in abstraction, then we are greeted by a drag queen that we follow down the rabbit hole to meet the menagerie of people that have become her community.