Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis

    “Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis” is Saïto’s second collaboration with musician Malcolm Goldstein, who composed and performed the original structured improvisation score for the film. The film explores familiar landscape imagery Saïto and Goldstein share in their neighbourhood at the foot of Mount-Royal Park in Montréal. Using images of maple trees in the park as the main visual motif, Saïto creates a film in which the formations of the trees and their subtle interrelation with the space around them act as an agent to transform viewer’s sensorial perception. Richly colored and entirely hand-processed, “Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis”…

  • Peking Turkey

    Chris Wong takes his French-Canadian boyfriend “homo” for Christmas, despite his traditional Chinese parents’ disapproval. With the dramatics of three languages (English, French, and Chinese) swirling around the table, Pierre tries to make a bond with Chris’ parents and find the approval he wants. Audience Award for Best Short at the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival, 2009

  • Retrato Oficial 2 | Official Portrait 2

    Retrato Oficial 2 | Official Portrait 2 animates the dissimulation and reconstruction of the great liberator of Chile, 19th-century revolutionary and republican Bernardo O’Higgins, and the historical reach of the late-20th-century dictator Augusto Pinochet. Based in part on a conceit borrowed from Raul Ruiz’s essay Images of Images and original footage shot by Patricio Guzman on September 11, 1973, the short video is an exploration of the mediated image and the mnemonic possibilities of video and still image technologies.

  • Belonging

    Toronto’s diverse culture and heritage are explored through a couple’s belongings, juxtaposed with the neighborhood in which they live.

  • Golden Pin, The

    Long, a young Vietnamese-Canadian swimmer, finds himself struggling between the expectations of his family and the demands of his heart. His father wants him to marry soon, but his mother, haunted by a past romance, hopes her son will stand up for what he believes. English & Vietnamese with English subtitles Awards: Colin Campbell Award for Best Canadian Short, Toronto Inside Out Festival 2009; 2nd Place, National Film Board Award for Best Canadian Short, 2009

  • irma Vep

    Mad pursuit for the wild life leads to an outrageously messy story about a cover girl who encounters dangerous magazine cut-outs. irmaVep / Stars the bride of quietness / In a flowery tale, / Who will transform thy shape, / Leaving behind unanswered questions: / What maidens loath? / What mad pursuit? / What struggle to escape? / What wild ecstasy? Selected Screenings: Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, 2009 (Toronto, Canada); Cucalorus Festival, 2009 (Wilmington, NC)

  • Seeing Through the Spider’s Web

    “SEEING THROUGH THE SPIDER’S WEB” weaves diverse interviews, documentary sequences, archival images, and utilizes a range of film stocks and experimental techniques in order to explore the effect of migration on family relations, faulty memories and failing eyesight.

  • Cutlery

    Over close – ups of cutlery in drawers and drying racks a reading of a short poem of the same title is read by the poet. In it is a lament for a past not fully recognized and a tradition that escapes the reader’s present situation…the longed for marriage groom which he will never be. Humorous and poignant at the same time, the past coincides in the present like a knife.

  • Spanish Tale, A

    The story of a family and their friend Paco who fled Spain after the Civil War and the threat of imprisonment under Franco’s regime. Told by an English voice-over of the grown daughter of the same family whose photo album we peruse as she recounts their harrowing escape to France and Montreal as a five year old child. The collision of cultures, the clash of beliefs, an idealist’s exile and how the shadow of the past interferes on subsequent events.

  • Blue Covers

    When the adult survivor of sexual abuse meets her lover, she struggles to remain present. She must remember that the hands of her lover are not the hands of her childhood abuser, and so, the separation between past and present begins to blur. Narrative and experimental, “Blue Covers” is an emotional, psychological and spiritual journey. A compelling look at the effects of sexual trauma, this short film is for survivors of abuse and those who care for them. “Blue Covers” was made possible through the generous support of San Francisco Women Against Rape and proj-ect PRO:JECT.