Film Categories: Work by Women

  • Occupant, The

    “The further away you go, the closer to home you get… It is true by way of geography…” Now that she has traveled land and sea, little Romny is about to meet the 360th degree of her trajectory. She reflects upon her journey and faces her duty to carry on.

  • ‘Yeah Whatever’ Girl, The

    “The ‘Yeah Whatever’ Girl” is a dramatic comedy delving into the romantic misadventures of Debbie – a cranky and bitter lesbian who has lost in love just one too many times. It is the eve of Gay Pride Day in Toronto as the film begins. In a humorously self-acknowledged homage to Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, Debbie’s recently deceased Grandmother has decided to intervene. Not only must Debbie mend her ways, but she must mend her heart. Over the course of the night, her Grandmother tells her, Debbie will be visited by three ghosts. And so the fun begins. First is…

  • Story of the Fish Girl, The

    “The Story of the Fish Girl” is a fantastical tale, told in the style of the silent cinema, about a young woman’s desire to escape her repressive existence, and discover independence and meaning in her life. Her transformation into a fish leads her on a journey of self-realization through the sewers of New York. Passive and naive, the fish girl swims without direction, unable to realize her goal of personal and spiritual fulfillment in the patriachal/animal world of the sewer system. The use of colour through hand-tinting techniques, superimposed over the B&W narrative, creates a visual space full of energy…

  • Sleep Lines

    On a sunny afternoon between dreaming and waking a couple come together and move apart in the interior world of their home. A hand-processed black-and-white queer experimental film exploring the tension between intimacy and separateness.

  • Folk Songs

    “This lyrical and impressionistic rumination on the filmmaker’s Bulgarian heritage explores the impact of family and tradition, the links between the old world and the new, and the simple, lovely gestures that unite generations.” – Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto In 1913, Sophia and Dimitry Makedonsky were teenagers when they left the Ukraine for the United States. Growing up in the Midwest, filmmaker LeAnn Erickson often heard stories of the “old country” her grandparents had left behind. As Erickson travels to Russia, the search for her sense of “place” sparks a re-examination of her family’s immigrant past. Her…

  • Secret Love

    A series of line drawings of a girl are inter-cut with black-and-white Japanese-inspired landscapes and textbook diagrams of electromagnetic waveforms, over which are animated organic materials such as star anise, lavender, poppy seeds, and cranberries. Created for the song by Flotilla.

  • Love Is Love

    Jake and Sabrina, two heterosexuals, struggle find love in a world where they just don’t fit in. Follow this comedic yet poignant look at how life might be if the world was predominately gay and straight people were the “queer” ones.

  • Pulsions

    “Pulsions” explores the fluidity of space and time through its emphasis on pulsing movement. “Pulsions” is a companion piece to “fugitive l(i)ght” (2005). The two films grew out of one project that aimed to explore the double ellipse/figure “8” that is created through the movements of living bodies, namely humans, birds and insects, underwater and in the air. Music by Colin Clark. Dance (choreography and performance) by Lucie Mongrain. Selected screenings: Alucine Festival, Toronto, ON, 2007; Nuit Blanche, Toronto, ON, 2007; WNDX Festival, Winnipeg Cinematheque, Winnipeg, MB, 2007; Warsaw Media Festival, Poland, 2007

  • Echo

    “Echo” recalls childhood and the native home of the filmmaker through image, song and text. This self-portrait hints at the fragments, the pieces, the painful and repressed shards that the self contains, and through which it strives to piece together and illuminate its mysterious gaps. “‘Echo’ by Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof boldly explores homesickness and cultural yearning through visual imagery, song and text. In this atypical self-portrait, the artist has created a photogram of her body that acts as a travelling matte through the countryside of her native land as she mouths an old Polish immigrant’s song; the original recording pierces like…

  • Congratulations Daisy Graham

    Seventy-year-old Daisy Graham is having a hard day. No one in her small town wants to let her forget about the big ceremony tomorrow, a ceremony at the local high school in her honour. But Daisy has more important things to think about than some ceremony – she’s dug out her old rifle, now all she needs is a box of bullets. Jury Prize, Best Female Short, Philadelphia Int’l Gay & Lesbian Film Festival World Premiere at 2007 Toronto International Film Festival Special Jury Mention at Image+Nation, Montreal “A subtle and touching portrait” – Barrett Hooper, NOW Magazine