Genres: documentary

Wisemen, God, and Wednesday

Within three diverse pairs of eyes are born three souls that converge. Samwise and Stevie grew up homeless in BC and Nova Scotia. Ianos is a gender-queer Greek. Kwaku is a single father who came from extreme poverty and famine. Featuring a juxtaposition of sound and imagery, “Wisemen, God, and Wednesday” is a sketch of these characters’ intimate commentaries on life as they see it.
Entre la langue et l’océan

A psycho-sexual poetic politico historico and reflective film document about the Canadian identity and the failed revolution of 1837 – 1838. To understand the disease’s origins is not equivalent to finding an effective therapy, but it is undoubtedly a crucial prerequisite. Entre la Langue et L’Océan. Surréaliste, radical, esthètiquement riche et techniquement ambitieux, ceci est un ﬁlm qui résiste toute classiﬁcation. A man tries to invent a liberated state and ends up in a penal colony. After awhile he hesitates to remember the cause of his incarceration. He only remembers what he left behind not what he was hoping to…
Video Art on the Edge

“Video Art on the Edge” explores the creative potential of videotape degradation through manipulating documentation of an historical video installation exhibition from The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1984), turning the material failure of video into an abstract, generative force. Video is a medium with a long but limited lifespan. Although the primary components of a legible image and audio endure for many years, the process of playback and reproduction inevitably produces degradation of videotape’s material substrate, producing distortions, particularly at the bottom edge of the image, upon playback. “Video Art on the Edge” explores what may be made of examining…
xīn nī 廖芯妮

xīn nī 廖芯妮 (“understanding you”) is an intimate auto-ethnographic portrait expressed through dance and digital technologies. Liaw engages in intergenerational conversations with her family and community to transform the linguistic divide between her Chinese name and its Hakka translation into a space for healing. Drawing on themes of decolonizing queerness to emphasize self-love and self-curiosity, the work explores both physical and technological attachments. Bodies made up of 3D-rendered cultural objects hold space for the stories of Liaw’s elders, while expanding the growing web of her ancestral knowledge.
Sultana’s reign

Sultana of New York is a Palestinian drag queen, performer, and artist. “Sultana’s Rein” opens with a conversation with Sultana, as she is being painted by Jordanian artist, RIDIKKULUZ. Reflecting on her journey from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, to then New York, Sultana tells of the challenges of performing drag in conservative societies, her nostalgia for the glory days and the glamour of Egyptian cinema icons, and her struggle to prove her existence and her self-expression as a performer and artist. She also shares her love of celebration and her everlasting commitment to be true to herself.
Building Heaven, Remembering Earth: Confessions of a Fallen Architect

“Filmmaker Oliver Hockenhull’s shockingly beautiful digital video essay on the philosophy of architecture.” Mari Sasano Building Heaven, Remembering Earth offers a cross-cultural, pan-historical reflection on how the spiritual and intellectual aspirations of self and society are expressed in, and confined by, the language of architecture. “Beginning with a glimpse of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel, this wild and opinionated essay peruses some of the world’s most resonant architectural sites, among them the Pantheon of Rome, Palladio’s Rotunda, Renzo Piano’s New Metropolis, Barcelona for Gaudi, then Mies van der Rohe, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar, India. Director…
Hawkesville to Wallenstein

An impressionistic documentary about the Old Order Amish farmers in Waterloo County during the winter months. (35 mm print available)
Cha ni chinu chi’in ñu’un / Construida de tierra / Built of Earth

Cha ni chinu chi’in ñu’un / Construida de tierra / Built of Earth is an experimental documentary project consisting of a short film, a publication, and a collaborative installation that explores the immense and ancient family home at the centre of Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. The cavernous adobe house is in the process of being restored after a devastating earthquake that saw a portion of its roof collapse in February 2018. The short film follows the restoration process, with its focus on traditional building materials and techniques, creative reuse, and local artisanal production. In doing so, it explores the origins of…
Facing the Music

FACING THE MUSIC:ABOUT A MAN WHO ESCAPED STALIN AND HITLER—AND PUTIN’S RESURRECTION OF BOTH STALIN AND HITLER IN UKRAINE. Wolodymyr joined the Ukrainian partisans in 1939. They were hiding cultural lead- ers who would otherwise be persecuted or murdered by Stalin. After Hitler invaded in 1941, Wolodymyr was abducted to Germany, surviving forced labour and incar- ceration in a concentration camp. Extrapolating from Wolodymyr’s story, the film shows how the atrocities he experi- enced via Stalin and Hitler have been the ‘blueprint’ for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s Wagner Group mercenaries were named after Hitler’s favourite composer: Richard Wagner. The…
Missing Associates Redux

In 1972, visual artist/filmmaker Peter Dudar and dancer/choreographer Lily Eng formed a multimedia partnership named MISSING ASSOCIATES. INVENT A NEW VOCABULARY. START FROM ZERO. OBSERVE AND INCORPORATE INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENT. MISSING ASSOCIATES [NOTES 1972] MISSING ASSOCIATES started the first wave of performance art and experimental dance in Toronto art galleries “MISSING ASSOCIATES ARE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE.” ESPERIENZA A CONFRONTO IL DIARIO DI NAPOLI, 1980 Next, MISSING ASSOCIATES performed and screened throughout the Americas and both Western and Eastern Europe. “PETER DUDAR AND LILY ENG ARE REVELATORY.” YORK UNIVERSITY RETROSPECTIVE IS TORONTO BURNING C MAGAZINE, 2014