Film Categories: Ethnography

  • Kiri and The Girl

    Based on the experiences of Tlingit artist Kiri Geen as she reconnected and reclaimed her Indigenous heritage after her adoption, “Kiri and The Girl” follows young Kiri as she navigates losing her mother and is guided to becoming her true self.

  • Cod Story

    This is a case study of the Canadian cod fisheries collapse of 1992. It investigates what the future of natural resource management holds, and what we can learn from our past mistakes.

  • xīn nī 廖芯妮

    xīn nī 廖芯妮 (“understanding you”) is an intimate auto-ethnographic portrait expressed through dance and digital technologies. Liaw engages in intergenerational conversations with her family and community to transform the linguistic divide between her Chinese name and its Hakka translation into a space for healing. Drawing on themes of decolonizing queerness to emphasize self-love and self-curiosity, the work explores both physical and technological attachments. Bodies made up of 3D-rendered cultural objects hold space for the stories of Liaw’s elders, while expanding the growing web of her ancestral knowledge. 

  • Cha ni chinu chi’in ñu’un / Construida de tierra / Built of Earth

    Cha ni chinu chi’in ñu’un / Construida de tierra / Built of Earth is an experimental documentary project consisting of a short film, a publication, and a collaborative installation that explores the immense and ancient family home at the centre of Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. The cavernous adobe house is in the process of being restored after a devastating earthquake that saw a portion of its roof collapse in February 2018. The short film follows the restoration process, with its focus on traditional building materials and techniques, creative reuse, and local artisanal production. In doing so, it explores the origins of…

  • Dear Friend, Where Have You Gone?

    For Jayden Martin, art is more than just a hobby. It’s his escape, his passion, and his lifeline. But as an artist in the small, rural community of Englehart, Ontario, Jayden’s dreams of making it big seem almost impossible. Despite growing up with divorced parents and struggling with addiction, mental health, and suicide, he remains determined to succeed. “Dear Friend, Where Have You Gone?” offers a rare glimpse into Jayden’s world as he navigates the challenges of small-town life and grapples with his own inner demons. This powerful documentary is an inspiring reminder of human resilience and the transformative power…

  • Landmarks of Memory

    A tattoo ritual and hookah session memorializes a pre-war flower shop. After seeing its storefront in archival footage of the Lebanese Civil War, a first-generation daughter seeks information and connection to place. Scenes of 1976 Beirut are paired with today’s developed landscape, while roses are etched and coconut coals burn in a snowy diasporic setting.

  • 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…

  • Work(ing Together) in Process

    On a quest to obtain some misdelivered camera batteries, Sam Koopman finds himself in a Rotterdam-based sex shop. Here he meets Marty who works there, and this chance encounter turns into a cinematic project between the two. When Sam turns the camera towards this new stranger, the two end up embarking on a year-long journey to create a film together. Their shared process of self-discovery turns this playful desktop film into a profound meditation on the nature of non-fiction film.

  • 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…

  • ôtênaw

    “ôtênaw” is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.