Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • The English Teacher

    English teacher Kofi Frimpong is starting classes once again for immigrants at a local language school in Toronto. Before starting the lesson, Taranjit Bains interrupts him to ask where the instructor is. Unsatisfied that Mr. Frimpong is teaching the class, Taranjit does not return. This isn’t the first time Mr. Frimpong’s legitimacy to teach the subject has been questioned, but it eats away at him nonetheless.

  • Mango Lemon Soda

    After spraining her ankle fleeing a terrible date, Zahrah is forced to spend an evening with her estranged ex, Tyler.

  • past(or)already

    A 16mm film comprised of 10 images from my grandma’s photo albums of my childhood printed frame by frame through a digital to film process

  • Lion in the Wind

    Fugue for wushu in the West.

  • After Bed

    Pulsing flashbacks from the summer of love reawaken a queer California classic.

  • The Translation is Approximate

    This video focuses a conversation that Naqvi witnessed between her aunt and a domestic worker over financial matters. For many reasons — the ambivalence of the situation, the respective socioeconomic positions of the two women involved in the scene, and the very nature of the recording, which careened between documentary and voyeurism — these images have long haunted Naqvi. In the Translation is Approximate (2021), Naqvi retrieves the original footage that she shot in 2013 and traces back her thoughts about what motivated her to revisit this material. This short video both provides insight into her approach and fundamentally questions…

  • Seaview

    Seaview (2015) is an experimental film which combines home video and captured footage from Karachi, Pakistan. Naqvi travels back to her family’s country of origin to compare childhood memories of this place with lived experience. In the first sequence, she shows video footage of her first trip to Clifton Beach in Karachi. The accompanying text describes her visit to the same beach seventeen years later, and the difficulties in trying to document this place, both as an image maker and as a woman. Naqvi confronts her own personal struggle of being caught between the ideals of Western and Eastern societies.…

  • Farzana

    Inspired by a true story, Farzana (2021) is a short narrative film which revolves around the relationship of two middle-aged women and how they navigate their work in the home. Charmaine is a psychotherapist who works from home, and she hires Nasreen as a domestic worker to help her maintain her household. Nasreen is a recent migrant who is dealing with financial precarity. When there is a crisis in Nasreen’s family, she asks for assistance from Charmaine, but lack of trust between the two women results in hostility and conflict. We see all of this through the eyes of Zinnia,…

  • Modulations

    A short film about memory, dislocation and cultural identity.

  • Shoes Off

    Shoes Off is a story about a Brazilian immigrant who becomes the subject matter of an artist’s canvas in Brooklyn. The film explores the themes of the queer diaspora beyond the family trauma trope in immigrant stories through the lenses of danger and desire. Shoes Off blends together its influence from the aesthetics and tropes of DIY porn, thrillers, and realistic dramas. Shoes Off is the portrayal of the challenges, pleasures, and adventures of what a queer immigrant experience could be, based on true stories. Shoes Off depicts how vulnerable and unique the queer experience can be in a search…