Film Categories: Childhood

  • Torrey Pines

    “Torrey Pines” is a stop-motion animated feature film by director Clyde Petersen. Based on a true story, the film is a queer punk coming-of-age tale, taking place in Southern California in the early 1990’s. Raised by a schizophrenic single mother, Petersen’s life story unfolds in a series of baffling and hallucinated events. With a mother fuelled by hallucinations of political conspiracy and family dysfunction, twelve-year-old Petersen is taken on a cross-country adventure that will forever alter the family as they know it.

  • Chicken Film

    I sat in the shade of a willow tree at the farm. A quiet place washed with iridescent cracks of light through leaves. A place supercharged by our shared past. Microstructures in the light identified with my memories of this place, the people, the events and their connection to the present. Sounds of the wind. The gentle foraging of chickens. Playful guitar practicing by my daughter Lexie sitting beside me. If this place and memory and time have an iridescence, could I find a way to preserve it? Eyes left: the garden. Eyes right: the chickens. Eyes forward: Lexie and…

  • A Celebration of Darkness

    A woman with a tortured past is triggered to take an unexpected walk down memory lane, she finds herself face-to- face with her inner child. Giving her a chance to make peace with her past. Does she find a way to celebrate darkness or does she become engulfed forever by it? In 2015, Jaene turned 40. This lead her to become introspective about her unusual life history. From a childhood of severe abuse, neglect, psychiatric institutionalization and being in care, she grew to become a street involved sex worker by 20. She met Elder, Isaac Day from Serpent River First…

  • Felt

    This film rips the lid off teenage alchoholism, self-abuse and pill popping in two-and-a-half fuzzy socially irresponsible minutes.

  • I Want To Kill Myself

    Contemplating suicide: a biography.

  • Mount Misery

    Emotionally drained after learning of the death of her long estranged sister, an elderly woman spends the day lost somewhere between her past and present and her conscious and subconscious mind. In this state, she ponders the inevitabilities of life, death and the hereafter. “Mount Misery” won Best Film prize at the Black International Cinema, Berlin film festival, 2017.

  • Heartbreak

    “Heartbreak” is a tribute to black mothers. It was written and produced in response to the constant threat of brutality they and their children (particularly boys) live under. Through poetry and the voice of a 5-year-old boy it relates the very real physical and psychological toll that violence has on black bodies and black souls.

  • Ripples/Derive

    On a summer day, 9 year-old Aissa accompanies her mother Yasmina to one of the houses where she works as a cleaning lady. When Aissa is bullied by Sarah, the daughter of Yasmina’s employer, there are tragic consequences for the victim.

  • In Between/Entre Deux

    On a cold fall evening, Leila is left alone to tend the family convenience store. A series of strange clients keep her in a constant state of apprehension. Language and cultural barriers also contribute to the making of a nerve-racking evening.

  • Why Must The Sun Go Down?

    When a little nightingale wonders to herself why the sun must go down at night, she decides to embark upon a journey. She first meets the Sunkeeper, and asks him why he sets the sun at night. The Sunkeeper explains that it is so the Starmaker knows when it’s time to put stars in the sky. The Nightingale’s journey then leads her to the Starmaker, the Flowermaker, and other celestial creatures of our world… At last she discovers that the sun must go down so that it can rise again in the morning, and that, just like everything else in…