Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • My Niagara

    “An inspired and resonant portrait of tenuous teen sensuality emerging from seamless suburban facades.” – David McIntosh, Toronto Festival of Festivals “‘My Niagara’ is definitely set in Toronto for people who know Toronto. But I wanted it to be read both ways, the character to be either Japanese Canadian or Japanese American. It’s also a matter of political self-definition, of what it means to be Asian American or Asian Canadian… It’s a matte of dissolving boundaries, about collapsing categories, as much as about self definition.” – Helen Lee, Fuse Magazine, Fall 1993

  • Subrosa

    “Subrosa” traces a young woman’s journey to Korea, the land of her birth, to find the mother she’s never known. This exquisitely crafted drama probes the idealized, often false constructions of cultural and maternal identities wrought by the adoptee’s return. “Subrosa” tracks the unnamed heroine from a sterile adoption agency office to seedy bars and motel rooms on neon strips, then to a stark U.S. army camp town and the bustling flower markets of Seoul. Though her path to self-destruction and ultimate self-revelation ironically and tragically mirrors that of her imagined biological mother, the past remains elusive to her, the…

  • Phone Comes to Jammu, A

    When her relatives in India finally gets a phone, a young woman contemplates how this “new” technology will narrow or widen the gap between her lesbian diasporic self and her relatives overseas. Does easy access guarantee closeness?

  • Silent Song

    “Silent Song” brings new life to a remarkable piece of 1945 footage found by chance in an archive. “Silent Song” completes a deeply personal trilogy on family history and Holocaust memory. The first two films of the trilogy, “Zyklon Portrait” (13min. 1999) and “The Walnut Tree” (11min. 2000) have been seen in 20 countries around the globe, garnering numerous awards. In the pandemonium of the liberation of Nazi concentration camp Dachau, a U.S. army cameraman filmed a young boy playing the accordian. This strangely poetic moment offers an unusual contrast to the all-too-familiar WWII liberation images of emaciated prisoners in…

  • Divas

    The 17-minute short about the lives of black female impersonators in Toronto that became the 81-minute feature “Divas: Love Me Forever.”

  • Once

    “Once” is a film about language, loss, and the construction of memory through language. Through voiceovers and fragmented footage, the characters in “Once” tell how they have come to study language in an attempt to relocate themselves at particular junctures in their lives. They describe their desire to learn Yiddish, a language they have speculative connections to or memories of. Their distance from the language and its intrinsic power to link them to an identity seems to increase their appetites for this language lost. Yiddish, it appears, while providing the elements of language, also represents a loss for, and only…

  • Way Out, A

    “A Way Out” is a documentary about breaking the cycle of poverty in Canadian’s oldest and largest “ghetto,” Regent Park. In addition to talking about what it is like to grow up poor in North America, it explores the reasons behind one person finding a way out and others remaining. As a former resident of a low-income community, Christene Browne went back to find out what had happened to some of her old friends. Formal and impromptu interviews are conducted and the community is revealed through footage and stills. A young man who currently lives in the community is also…

  • Shelter

    “Shelter” is a multi-layered experimental film that cleverly weaves archival social commentary and recent political activism in a playful analysis of our culture’s misplaced priorities. The film blends a variety of appropriated material – including a homeless demonstration during the gala premiere of an Atom Egoyan film at the Toronto Film Festival – with archival footage of circuses, westerns, and Pierre Burton discussing the pros and cons of building a bomb shelter. “Shelter” also celebrates the inherent qualities of the film medium, qualities that have quickly become marginalized through the current obsession with digital technology.

  • Skingames

    In 1994, film director Steve James introduced the world to his documentary “Hoop Dreams.” The film follows two inner-city teenagers on the courts of Chicago, who dream of playing professional basketball. Those same dreams are explored right here in Canada in “Skingames”, as the NBA dream is now one step closer since 1995 expansion agreement that welcomed the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies as the 28th and 29th teams to the NBA. With the changing demographics and the NBA presence in Canada comes growing concerns that thousands of black kids are being drawn away from the classroom and toward…

  • Réveille (Wake Up)

    This simple and engaging animated film tells of an event which changed the course of French history in North America: the deportation of the Acadians, or “neutralist French,” from Nova Scotia by the English and Americans. The French Canadians are burned out of their homes, displaced to Louisiana. The image of soldiers/oppressors transformed into children’s toy soldiers has been called one of the most quietly powerful moments in animation history. The anger and poinancy of “Reveille” is enhanced by a haunting Acadian folk song.