Film Categories: Childhood

  • Over the Island

    On the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the act of leaving has become ingrained into the culture. Since the closure of its main industries, the Glace Bay coal mine and the Sydney steel plant, many young families have been forced to relocate, migrating thousands of miles in the pursuit of work. ‘Over the Island’ is an experimental documentary that follows a mother traveling back home to the island, and a filmmaker attempting to connect the past with the present. This film deconstructs the concept of ‘home’, and investigates how one’s sense of belonging, self identification and familial relationship are…

  • Freya

    Tethering falconry and motherhood, Freya weaves together themes of death and magic, where seasons re-arrange, just as myth and memory are re-cast through a childhood spell.

  • Hand

    Using spray paint and markers, the film animates moving hand shapes, outlined hands, crossing hands, hand prints, intertwining fingers. This simple visual concept, hand outline tracings, shows the artistry involved in the manipulation of colour, texture, and rhythm.

  • meditations on a process

    An experimental documentary exploring the filmmakers’ mutual interests in spirituality, imprints of childhood, and ecologies of presence in personal filmmaking practices, bookended by poetry that situates their musings in a rapidly changing Toronto.

  • Happy Birthday Baby

    Bonding between parents and baby helps create the new family; this process is clearly explained in a warm and informative way. As the family prepares for the birth of a child, the relationships of parents and siblings, as well as the birth itself, appear through film.

  • WE DON’T TALK LIKE WE USED TO

    “Shot between Hong Kong, Japan, and the US, this short is Joshua Gen Solondz’s most ambitious work to date, a portrait of the home and the world that is dense, textured, creepy, anxious, noisy, silly, and confounding, but always tender.”-TIFF “We Don’t Talk Like We Used To” continues Joshua Gen Solondz’s loose series of addled diary films with a film that is part travelogue, part affective almanac, and part cinematic noise show. With stops in Hong Kong, New Hampshire, Japan, and Brooklyn, the film alloys obscured faces, oozing on-screen text, throbbing abstractions, solarized superimpositions, and the occasional dad joke into…

  • Greenhorn

    While at a dinner party with friends in the city, 20-something masculine presenting Logan receives a phone call that her estranged Father has been in a car accident. With encouragement from her Mother, Logan decides to travel back to her rural hometown to care for him. Logan spends the first few days clearing out the house, reconnecting with her childhood, and preparing for her Father’s return from the hospital. While organizing some of his things, she comes across an old Western movie and her Father’s old Western wear from his glory days as a ranch hand. Letting her curiosity get…

  • from where to where من وين لوين d’où vers où

    In the pieces I store and carry along my many different roads, my dialects may be signs of bruises but reclaimed they form the skin and voice I live in. Experiences of the where, from where, to where; a narrative amongst others. And as the words finally trickle through the needles, fingers seeping with tints trace the outline of whirling fields where I hang a jasmine branch on suspended necks and in the in-betweens, language soothes, swans mend, and the daily brings calm. We are the comfort of our multiples.

  • Invincible Spring

    An artist’s lost innocence comes calling. Modified memories of Clara – James’ lost love as a child – are clashed with scenes from his current infatuation with an unfaithful businesswoman. 16mm film, digital video, and CGI are used to illustrate Jame’s fluctuating states of mind, while variations of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte” serve as a pulsing connection among them.

  • light in my eyes

    A personal and poetic walk through light, love, and memories of a blind grandfather. Artist/filmmaker Christopher Wiersema considers his grandfather’s enigmatic and eloquent point of view while playing with his own. The film’s soundscape centers around a phone call with the artist’s grandmother, Rina Pullia, as she reflects on caregiving for her husband, Angelo, in Chicagoland.