Film Categories: Families

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Night Scenes

    Katerina feels nauseous. Michael used to be an alcoholic. They are a Russian couple living in Toronto. Katerina is pregnant, and her father is dying. Michael has lost Katerina’s trust. He is awkwardly trying to make things right.

  • Holding Hands with Ilse

    “Holding Hands With Ilse” is a moving documentary about the search for the German teenage girl who took care of the filmmaker between 1948-1950 in Walbrzych, Poland where he was born. Knowing only her first name and circulating a small photograph taken in 1950 of the two, the director explores the urban landscapes of western Poland and the journey involved in their unexpected reunion that recently took place in Ibbenbüren, Germany. Filmed in the USA, Poland and Germany.

  • Bonsai

    A once joyful teenager, Frida, a girl with a head full of leaves is faced with challenges after losing her mother, Lu. Frida has a head full of leaves to depict the metaphor of the relationship humans have with nature to how parents treat their children. Nature has to be taken care of in order for it to beautifully develop. Unfortunately, today, individuals today are sometimes not aware of the slow but terrible destruction they are capable of. Children on the other hand need nurturing from their parents to have a good upbringing both mentally and physically. But due to…

  • The Fenestration of Suburbia

    The Fenestration of Suburbia is a melancholic social documentation of a cold Canadian suburb. Framed behind windows and surveilled from the street, the lives of suburbanites float in the black cinematic frame to form images that are simultaneously sorrowful, mundane, theatrical, and puzzling.

  • Everything’s Great!

    “Everything’s Great!” is a comedy-drama about an awkward, hapless lesbian who bounces between a messy not-relationship relationship and her alcoholic-dad-soaked home life, trying to find stability in others—and eventually finding it in herself.

  • Daily Bread

    In a WWII internment camp in Indonesia, Jeanne and a group of Dutch women and children face a daily struggle against abuse, disease, and starvation. Meanwhile, the Camp Commandant’s beloved white fluffy cat is fed fresh juicy meat….

  • Laundry Day

    JJ retells the story of a dream her late grandmother had when she was a young woman. That a simple chore of hanging laundry, that our dreams can have a deeper meaning than we originally thought.

  • Queer Camp Trilogy

    The Queer Camp Trilogy is a series of experimental films exploring the hidden dimensions of queer Japanese American wartime history. This trilogy, made up of Looking For Jiro (2011), Warning Shot (2016), and On the Line (2018), was inspired by first-generation Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by the US government during World War II. These subjects left subtle yet discernible traces of same-sex intimacy or gender nonconformity in the archive, despite the enormous pressure put upon Japanese Americans to accept their imprisonment quietly, prove their patriotic loyalty, and smile for Ansel Adams during their unlawful imprisonment. I approached their enigmatic…

  • The Evening Thread

    An old woman prepares to die. Accompanied by her granddaughter, she reflects on the memories of her life, and on the profound experience of being human, before taking the next step into the unknown.