Film Categories: Urban

  • MY FRIEND VINCE

    Vince is a street hustler. I’m the friend. Or am I? Set in raw, downtown Toronto in the early ’70’s, and co-directed by the late Howard Alk (The Murder of Fred Hampton, American Revolution II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Alk) The film explores the question of friendship in Vince’s world, a world built on cheating and lying, and then compares relationships formed in that world with relationships influenced by film making.

  • A Tree Gets in the Way

    We are a determined species. We make plans and calculate in advance how to accomplish a goal. These calculations are not always completely accurate wherein something unanticipated can occur. On a warm spring day, I saw this house on a truck being moved to an empty lot. It looked like it would take maybe a half hour to position the house. That was until its progress was prevented by a tree in the corner of the lot. This delayed the operation until the tree could be removed.

  • remnanthood

    A 16mm film that investigates the history and the scenery within the geographical boundaries of Regent Park

  • Traces / آثار

    In the midst of the rubble of a torn building, a reel of film. An unlikely unraveling of queer bodies taking shape and form, while the war-torn city around and its spectacle of toxic masculinity glitches and disintegrates.

  • Mango Lemon Soda

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

  • PANDALAND: Making IT Count

    “PANDALAND: Making IT Count” is about how children become engaged and learn to grapple with big social issues. The filmmaker accomplishes this by encouraging playful exploration in a multi-media installation of 70+ toy pandas she created in her neighbourhood. The vibe of the film is lighthearted and optimistic. As the children initiate an election on behalf of the pandas, their experience embodies community building, demonstrates acts of civic engagement and conveys the important message that, by working together, even young children can effect change. The film is a life-affirming tribute to kids’ compassion and the birth of their activism! This…

  • Lines Drawn

    Shot in two downtown Toronto parks over the course of the pandemic, Lines Drawn looks at various measures of persuasion, containment and control that were brought to bear over the course of the City’s attempts to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, space was defined by how the social bond was re-formed and which barriers were designed for mutual and directional protection. What are the shapes of the pandemic and how did they shape our interactions with each other? Supported by Media City Film Festival’s Chrysalis Fellowship

  • Solace

    Even in the most volatile, desperate and loneliest moment there exists the possibility for grace. Two strangers meet. One moment, one sentence, one choice sets their lives on a dramatically different course. A poetically urban exploration of violence and grace.

  • Matin Dans Une Foret de Pins (Morning in the Pine Forest)

    The lives of six young people unfold in a journey through different worlds revealed and interwoven, where the boundaries between documentary and fiction, reality and dream cease to exist. The volatile and seductive landscape of urban and rural Latvia was treated as a rich context for the complex relationships one has with the world – inviting the viewer to come upon the questions that bind us in our common need to understand our humanness. This film is based on the lives of HELENA, EVA, JANKA, GUNTIS, ANNA and GALC.

  • This is a Crisis

    An anonymous bureaucrat traipses around the City of Toronto, repurposing hostile architecture as their playground. Featuring spliced audio of former mayor John Tory’s victory speeches from 2014, 2018, and 2022 municipal election nights, bleak scenes are juxtaposed with a heavy-handed narrative of progress and inclusion. Documented on January 31, 2023—weeks before Tory would resign—this public performance and accompanying video artwork offer a critique of procedural fetishism, the surveillance and criminalization of poverty, and what cities become when they leave the most marginalized behind.