Film Categories: Youth

Things That Happen in The Bathroom

In the intimate sanctuary of the bathroom, a lonely young queer yearns for love, and learns how to survive heartbreak. For Jak (John Calvin Pierce), the bathroom is a refuge, a place where they can exist without wearing the mask they present to the world. But when their feelings of loneliness threaten to overwhelm them, Jak invites a new hookup into the bathroom – opening up to all the pleasure, embarrassment and self-discovery that comes with queer intimacy.
Fiori Della Mia Vita (flowers of my life)

Fiori Della Mia Vita is a memorial to lost love that is based on the true love story of my mentor Gianpaolo Barbieri and his partner Evar, who died a quarter of century ago. GPB + EVAR
Four Short Animated Films

Four short animated films on one reel: The Magician’s Hat: A magician discovers more than a white rabbit in his hat with hilarious results. Making Faces: A simple blank figure is transformed into eighty different characters. A study of the variety of human faces. Alleycats: Alleycats are disappearing all over town! The solution to this mystery may lie behind the curtains of an apartment building. Computer animation. Eye to Eye: In this computer-animated film a man loses control of the parts of his face. Note: Also available from the filmmaker are four flipbooks from the Books That Move Series.
Badassery

This compelling exposé takes a look at three female DJs who are unapologetically disrupting the Toronto hip-hop scene. The film chronicles the journey of women who are pursuing their passions and crafting their careers in a male-dominated industry. From the up-and-coming independent curator to the global powerhouse, these creatives have crafted a brand for themselves as industry leaders, without compromising who they are. They are paving the way for a generation of women and LGBTQ people, previously excluded from the social and cultural norms of the hip-hop world. It is the weirdos and nonconformists who are now redefining what it…
Nadia’s Songs

“Nadia’s Songs” follows a teenage boy who finds a collection of CDs that used to belong to a stranger known only as Nadia. In their shared taste in music he imagines her life story while in turn reflecting on his own. One part essay and one part love letter to second-hand music shops, “Nadia’s Songs” explores the many ways we can forge our identities through the art we consume and things we collect as young adults.
Vanilla

Vanilla takes you through the everyday ordinary life of a disabled senior citizen living in Ottawa, Canada. It is a portrait documenting aging and the loneliness of those suffering in silence. The black and white film was shot on 16mm Bolex film camera using a KODAK 7222 Double-X Negative film. Processed by Niagara Film Lab (Toronto). Created as part of Independent Filmmakers Co-operative of Ottawa (IFCO) – Dogme Production Challenge.
What’s Ours and What We Are

In “What’s Ours and What We Are,” images, motifs and words that originally served a particular political agenda are playfully manipulated to distort and re-contextualize their original status, satirically articulating the purpose of propaganda which is to ‘speak to’ and ultimately to persuade a spectator.
Hear Me

A formal collage of various song bites that expresses feelings of anxiety and depression. Uses music and lyrics to describe struggles with mental health / finding hope. I collected lyrics for a couple months that I connected with and helped me understand and describe my struggles with mental health. Then I stitched them together in a poem of sorts. The poem as well as the imagery are jumpy and mimic what goes on in a spiral or panic attack (at least for me) as I move through a dark space and back toward light.
Waiting (انتظار)

A young woman journeys to visit her grandmother. What transpires between the unsaid and silence propels into a prolonged moment of tension and desires of connection. Image description: A young woman and her grandmother sit next to each other on a couch. They both look straight ahead with stony-faced expressions, not talking.
Xam

Xam is a sci-fi exploration on the future of surveillance and body hacking. While in the London subway, an unsuspecting man opens a strange text, rendering him unconscious and dragging him through a wormhole. He awakes, lost, on the train tracks in Kiev, Ukraine, unable to communicate with friends or family. With the help of the hacker community in Kiev, and then Paris, the man harnesses alternative virtual transmissions in an attempt to find his way home. Xam is told through an intimate, first-person frame and video collage to emphasize the increasing integration of human and technology. The story is…