Film Categories: body

  • Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes

    With his camera, Brakhage enters one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. “This last is a process that requires a witness; and what ‘idea’ may finally have inserted itself into the sensible world we can scarcely guess, for the camera would seem the perfect eidetic witness, staring with perfect compassion where we can scarcely bear to glance” (Hollis Frampton).

  • On Her Baldness

    “On Her Baldness” is a documentary about women who have lost their hair due to illness or who have shaved their heads by choice. Focusing on women whose baldness has forced them to confront issues of appearance, self-image and sexuality, this film challenges viewers to question and confront their own prejudices regarding the true nature of beauty and femininity.

  • One Woman Waiting

    “One Woman Waiting” evokes questions of subjectivity in the mirrored performance of two women. The single take, tableau composition forms the structure for catalytic change between the characters. The sensuous desert environment accentuates the poetic and ephemeral quality of this film. “Massarella uses the fixed camera shot in her enigmatic film of a symbolic encounter between two women in a beautifully shot desert location. Its cryptic form is a good example of how an idea can be treated most effectively by simple means, for instance in the use of the frame as a point of entry and exit for characters…

  • Ay Que Pelos!

    “Ay Que Pelos!” is a hand-processed experimental film about anxiety disorders and panic attack syndrome. This bilingual film (interweaving English and Spanish) incorporates personal experiences, family history, case studies and medical texts, and uses these to examine the perception and (mis)understanding of the disease. The film is visually structured to reflect and invoke the experience of panic attack.

  • Plastic Surgery

    The film draws an analogy between the cutting and suturing of the human body and the reconstruction of the world through film. Using optical printing techniques, it connects diverse elements in a dream-like flow: a vision of mind at play amid the anxieties of our society. It ‘s also an operation on our image systems, including cinema.

  • Broca

    Using poetry, interviews with psychologists and survivors, and corporeal imagery, Broca is an experimental documentary hybrid that explores how the mind-body connection is altered after trauma. The Broca’s Area in the brain is involved primarily in speech production. During a traumatic event or when trying to recall a traumatic event, this area shuts down. This makes it harder for a survivor to talk about what’s happened. Our project offers a platform for survivors to tell their stories both verbally and non-verbally.

  • The Sky After Rain (Payam Feili)

    Based on a poem by exiled gay Iranian poet, Payam Feili, written after the arrest of his boyfriend during Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests.

  • The Sky After Rain (Shaya Goldoust)

    Based on Shaya Goldoust’s audio journals narrating her attempts at testing rigid gender boundaries, and the transphobic incidents which led to her leaving her family and motherland, Iran.

  • The Sky After Rain (Shyla Hope)

    Based on recorded audio interviews with Shyla Hope discussing her inner self journey to understanding and accepting her identity as a lesbian trans woman growing up in Iran.

  • Woven in Time

    Woven in Time features the wearable art creations of renowned Canadian fabric artist Evelyn Roth animated by her ‘moving sculpture company’ of dancers in collaboration with filmmaker Tony Westman. Evelyn won an ‘Etrog’ in the Best Art Direction category at the 1977 Canadian Film Awards for this timeless artistic classic. The allegorical visual narrative presents transformations of creatures that emerge from the sea, moving onto a vast desert landscape, then into a cocoon state only to be re-born into a lush landscape of color and eventual freedom.