Film Categories: Feminism

  • Waiting (انتظار)

    A young woman journeys to visit her grandmother. What transpires between the unsaid and silence propels into a prolonged moment of tension and desires of connection. Image description: A young woman and her grandmother sit next to each other on a couch. They both look straight ahead with stony-faced expressions, not talking.

  • Prowling By Night

    Gwendolyn’s film Prowling By Night documents the harassment faced by sex trade workers in their crusade to promote safe sex. The film is made with the active participation of 21 prostitutes in Toronto’s Parkdale area.

  • Spirit Glitch

    A queer woman of colour struggles to regain her voice form the void as traumatic memories threaten to glitch her spirit away piece by piece, leaving an empty shell. With every ounce of willpower, she must find the strength to face the reality of another day.

  • WELL ROUNDED

    Soft? Dark? Queer? WELL ROUNDED is here! Featuring Mi’qmaw force of nature, comedian and broadcaster, Candy Palmater. Edgy, hilarious, unapologetically raunchy, and sometimes tear-jerking, WELL ROUNDED brings you your new super queer XXXL racialized BFFs in comedy, fashion, health and research to help combat those pesky systemic fatphobias that threaten to make you hate yourself — when actually you’re PLENTY amazing just as you are. Blending gorgeous interviews with dreamy animation, director Shana Myara assembles personal stories from a diverse, captivating cast whose horrors, triumphs and commitment to dreaming large offer BIG inspiration — especially for those of us who…

  • Wash Day

    As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one’s outwardly appearance. Image description: A Black woman’s hands cradle long dark braids as water washes over them.

  • Every Day Burns

    Award winning pole dancer, Sada Velasquez, addresses the familial and social stigma she must overcome in order to pursue her passion for dance. Everyday Burns is a short documentary exploring one artist’s journey towards self expression and community empowerment. Every day Sada overcomes physical limitations, personal doubts and moral perceptions of others in order to create a safe space for folks to explore their sensual freedom.

  • Originate and Recompile

    In 1962 Ernesto De Martino travelled to the South of Italy for his ethnographic research and shot “La Taranta”. A study around women who were poisoned by a Trantula bite while harvesting in the fields. The remedy against the deadly poison was a folk dance called Taranta. The women danced the poison out of their bodies with the help of local musicians and priests. Studies around this phenomenon have highlighted that, in the majority of cases, these women were suffering severe mental illness and hysteria due to sexual abuse and poverty. In present-day Italy a similar dynamic has resurfaced, uncovering…

  • Private View

    A view out my window and worries in my head. — A PRIVATE VIEW is a site-specific collective screening series curated by John Woods and created as a part of Iris Film Collective’s IN HOUSE series. What is private space and what is public? In the subdivided landscape of Vancouver privacy can be evasive, but each of us views our home as our castle and our homes’ windows give us a unique vantage point that is ours and ours alone. Iris member John Woods gave a roll of expired colour film stock to each of the members of the collective…

  • GIRLBAND

    Life on the road. It’s not easy. 50 hours of cub tour footage (1994 & 1996) boiled down to this. Thanks to Canada Council for the Arts, Vtape, Trinity Square Video and FAG for support.

  • The House of Science: a museum of false facts

    “Throughout ‘The House of Science’ an image of a woman, her brain revealed, is a leitmotif. It suggests that the mind/body split so characteristic of Western thought is particularly troubling for women, who may feel themselves moving between the territories of the film’s title –house, science, and museum, or private, public and idealized space — without wholly inhabiting any of them. This film explores society’s representation and conceptualization of women through home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage and voice. Sachs’ personal memories recall the sense of her body being divided, whether into sexual and functional territories, or ‘the…