Genres: short

  • The Flower and The Flood

    Following the seasonal cycle of a saffron farm based in the Fraser Valley, the film explores unmechanized labor through harvesting the delicate crocus stamen by hand. After an atmospheric river decimates the flourishing saffron crop in 2021, the flood waters temporarily return Semá:th Xó:tsa to the valley more than a century after its forced draining. The film traces the interconnected history of this sacred lake with the rebuilding of the saffron crop; cultivating community and the most expensive spice in the world. Collaborating with the saffron crocus and other plants through eco-processing and analogue processes, the family garden offers us…

  • a decade

    a decade is an experimental film that fuses analog and digital techniques and reflects on the artist’s life through the 1980s.—a time of rebellion, discovery, and loss. Blending Super 8 and 16mm film, digital animation and personal reflection, the film drifts from the raw urgency of punk rock to the glittering pulse of gay discos. Bookended by the deaths of his two closest friends, it’s a haunting and poetic elegy to a transformative era, where identity and community thrived amidst the shadows.

  • Marked

    Marked is an experimental film that merges Super 8 and 16mm formats to examine the presence of queer intimacy. At its center are two shirtless men, locked in an embrace, dancing — a quiet yet radical act. Overlaid with hand-inked 16mm film, their bodies become both seen and obscured, highlighted and erased. Through this layered process, Marked reflects on how queer love is shaped, celebrated, and scarred by the society that surrounds it.

  • 敬祖 ·PAYING RESPECTS

    ‘敬祖 ·PAYING RESPECTS’ is a short film using the Chinese ritual of burning joss paper to reflect on questions of death & diaspora. Yiqing explores her grief by offering her ancestors everything they couldn’t afford. Everything she burns gets sent to the afterlife. The film plays with themes of memory, distance and dreams.

  • Never Sleep

    Muna is a timid nonbinary teenager with the ability to communicate with the spirit world through her dreams. Following the sudden death of their father Ibrahim, they chooses to stop sleeping to avoid having to confront his restless spirit. When Muna’s estranged aunt Naja re-enters their life, their collective grief meets the turbulent spirits of their ancestors, and the two family members must decide whether to remain comforted by avoidance or face their fear of emotional vulnerability head on. With Naja’s guidance, Muna manages to forge a path towards rewriting her understanding of memory, loss, legacy and familial responsibility

  • Nice Step to Take, A

    The radical change from an institutional residence to an apartment complex promoting independence sets the stage for this film about the people at Bellwoods Park House in Toronto. Founded in 1967 by the Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute, Bellwoods is one of the first residences for the disabled in North America. This film puts a face on people too often masked by our perception of disability. Produced for The Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute of Metro Toronto.

  • FREE JOAN LITTLE

    Free Joan Little tells the story of the 1975 groundbreaking case of Joan Little (pronounced Jo-Ann), who was one of the first women in U.S history to be acquitted for using deadly force to resist sexual assault. Joan was a Black incarcerated woman in North Carolina who killed her white prison guard who was trying to rape her. Little’s murder trial became an international cause célèbre, uniting fractured social movements—Civil Rights activists, feminists, Black Power advocates, and death penalty opponents—in an unprecedented intersectional coalition that challenged systemic racism and sexism in the criminal justice system.

  • Fractures chimiques ON/OFF

    Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the result of an audiovisual performance combining 16mm projection and reactive electronic music. Using a sensor device attached directly to the screen, the light information escaping from the projectors is collected and transferred to modular synthesizers which generate the film’s live soundtrack. Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the first film of a series of experiments on the relationship between music and film in performative contexts.

  • La dureté du mental

    “It’s a distraction for many, a profession for a few, when for me sport is my whole life. And if fighting is the reason you’re living. If every muscle clamors : train me, exercise, put on a sprint. Find a competitor or at least fight against a pole. It’s hard to get started but it’s otherwise difficult to stop. Even with your back against the mat. Never mind. You have to stand up and go further. You will now have to fight against yourself.” Transforming Olympic wrestling and pole vaulting Soviet films from the 1980s into expressive, painterly imagery, the…

  • The Thought That Counts

    The film follows Davis, grappling with profound grief and illness while struggling with memories of his late mother. His devoted husband attempts to uplift him with a heartfelt gift: a home to raise butterflies. As they navigate unexpected challenges in nurturing the delicate creatures (the cocoons already hatched), Davis confronts his past and finds solace in the transformative power of memories and the healing journey of letting go.