Film Categories: Culture

  • Don’t Take My Joy Away

    In the Shatila Palestinian camp in Lebanon, two friends, Omar and Omar, find moments of joy amid hardship until sudden violence forces them to confront loss and survival.

  • A Flame the Colour of Air

    Medieval Catholic mystic Hildegard von Bingen reconciles the virgin/whore dichotomy in a psychedelic, erotic vision. Hildegard was known for her waking visions of the divine, her musical compositions, and her extensive medical encyclopedias. The animated imagery in this film is inspired by her surviving transcriptions, which suggest a departure from the mainstream views of her culture. In this speculative fictional tale, Hildegard has a vision in which erotic dancers appear to her as embodiments of the divine. The narration is strategically selected and collaged from Hildegard’s texts.

  • Hedge-Rider

    The Hedge-Rider sits at the boundary between the garden and the wild. She uses flying ointments to transcend her body and take flight during the night. The film attempts to capture themes around European witchcraft and altered states of consciousness.

  • Avant Seriana

    Mom, you brought me back to our homeland. All I know about these harsh landscapes I learned from books written by the hand that burned these mountains. I try to undo the colonial myths engraved into my memory, but the hills escape my gaze. Do you think I, too, have become the white djinn spoken of by the legends surrounding our martyrs? Avant Seriana is an essay film shot in Super 8 in the Aurès region of Algeria. Observing the landscapes of my native land, I realize that they are divided into several images and times. Two different countries are…

  • Aunt Harriet

    Aunt Harriet is a meditative moving portrait exploring introspection, healing, and aging. Set against the backdrop of rural Ontario it deepens the memory of Black lives, bridging past and present – history and myth.

  • The Flower and The Flood

    Following the seasonal cycle of a saffron farm based in the Fraser Valley, the film explores unmechanized labor through harvesting the delicate crocus stamen by hand. After an atmospheric river decimates the flourishing saffron crop in 2021, the flood waters temporarily return Semá:th Xó:tsa to the valley more than a century after its forced draining. The film traces the interconnected history of this sacred lake with the rebuilding of the saffron crop; cultivating community and the most expensive spice in the world. Collaborating with the saffron crocus and other plants through eco-processing and analogue processes, the family garden offers us…

  • Nimer (Family)

    Nimer—meaning “family” in the Even language—follows the life of a nomadic family in Yakutia as they navigate the delicate balance between tradition and modernity. Against the backdrop of harsh northern landscapes, the film captures their resilience, the strength of ancestral bonds, and the challenges of sustaining a way of life under pressure from social and cultural change. At its heart is the mother, who embodies both continuity and adaptation, teaching her children along their seasonal migrations while preserving the customs passed down through generations. Offering an intimate portrayal of everyday survival, devotion, and hope, Nimer invites audiences into a world…

  • Digital Evangelism

    Set in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke, where religious monuments and the remains of colonization can be found everywhere, Digital Evangelism observes technology’s increasing presence and replacement of religion in society. Juxtaposing catholic iconography, filmed on a vintage camera, with overlays of technology-themed GIFs notes how technology is worshipped, and internet usage feels like a religious experience, from AI being the all-knowing source, online figures being praised, and devoting hours a day to our phones.

  • The Years

    THE YEARS is a poetry film exploring life stages through various ages as experienced by different actors in a non-chronological order and time frame. Historical Super 8mm film footage mixes with digital recordings as the poem is voiced by the filmmaker/author. Questions of impermanence and the instability of time frame the histories indicated by the filmed images gathered by the artist over years of recorded witnessing.

  • E.C. Roe Expressway

    A Super 8 experimental film and a meditation on living in Windsor, Ontario under the influence of American television, blending dancers from a Detroit TV station with a quiet sense of hometown memory.