Film Categories: Canada

  • The Beautiful Room is Empty

    “Haddad’s The Beautiful Room is Empty explores the loaded memories of space through his aunt, Marie, (re)visiting her childhood home and recalling the abuse she endured there. […] What have the walls been listening to? What have they absorbed, retained, and released upon a return, a farewell?” – Sarah Sarofim, Canadian Art

  • Skin Deep

    Skin Deep leads us into worlds where people are never what they appear to be. It is a riveting psychological drama about obsession, relationship and sexuality. As Alex Koyama prepares to shoot an exploitation film about tattooing and the culture of pleasure and pain, the world around her exists only to serve her film. She initiates a dangerous and threatening game when Chris Black responds to her ad in a tattoo magazine. For Alex, this is living research, and she ignores the fact that Chris is deeply disturbed and gender-disoriented. This denial escalates into a psychological battle between Alex and…

  • C’est à qui, cette ville?

    “C’est à qui, cette ville?” is a response to the 1984 film, “Ville, Quelle Ville?” This original super 8 film documented various places in Toronto’s east end and reflected upon a young woman’s life in the city. 38 years later, “C’est à qui, cette ville?” revisits many of the same locations and contemplates a more mature perspective on urban living. This film was shot on outdated super 8 stock which gives the image a patina of time passing. Musical score by Montreal-based artist and composer, Jackie Gallant.

  • MAN MADE

    MAN MADE, a repurposed narrative of a boy who gets introduced to the wonders of life by a beautiful shining trumpet. But the struggle to be oneself has only begun. Utilizing found 16mm footage and both digital and analog manipulation techniques, Mikkola pierces conventional masculinity with a transformative queer gaze.

  • Arrival 1, Arrival 2

    This experimental essay film springs from the final days of December 2020 when I moved from Chicago to Toronto. The film documents my move and then continues on alternate paths, weaving through the liminal spaces of borders, sickness, interpellation, and dreams. Content Note: This film contains extended discussions about fatphobia and disordered eating. Specifically, this film contains descriptions of food restriction, idealization of thinness, and intense emotional and physical pain after eating. After 11:41 there is no direct discussion of disordered eating. Flashing lights throughout. Loud noises throughout.

  • Tell Me about SunTea

    Tell Me about SunTea (Super 8, Digital Video, Colour, Stereo Sound, 6 minutes and 47 seconds) Tell Me about SunTea builds a conversational and spatial ecosystem, weaving together the disparate spaces of the Toronto Islands and Covington, Texas. The film considers the life cycles of plants and animals, as discussed by the filmmaker’s Gram and as remembered by the filmmaker. Conversational obstacles and a failed interview attempt are re-imagined as off-road opportunities. The repeated voice over reveals changes in cadence and content that point to the fragile intimacy held in language and storytelling. “Considering different forms of mechanical and organic…

  • Isolated Gestures

    With Isolated Gestures I am primarily concerned with exploring the interplay of sunlight and shadows with weather as the narrative. The story for me is in how light contrasts the absence of light in shaping forms within a given frame of time and space. I generally gravitate towards places that reveal the many layers of time, stimulating reflections on all the different life forms that may have existed in a particular location where I have set up my camera and tripod. This is when I imagine worlds that have passed, worlds that are present, and worlds that are yet to…

  • Burning Farm House

    While driving down Highway 13 in Saskatchewan, Canada I noticed some unusual black smoke on the horizon which turned out to be an early 20th Century farmhouse. I quickly found an empty field nearby and positioned my camera for about an hour until the farmhouse merged into the prairie landscape.

  • Intersextion

    Two abstract energies fall in love, unite as one then disappear into a vanishing point. Cameraless handmade film with handmade optical soundtrack.

  • séance

    In this piece, I attempted to switch between the persona of a settler woman and myself speaking on postcolonialism. I do this by taking my costume on and off. “Occupying the bodies of notable female figures from Peterborough’s history, Calla Durose Moya stages a conversation with the past in order to come to terms with her identity in the present. With volunteer and employment experience in local heritage institutions, Durose Moya has observed first-hand the limits imposed by the colonial lens with regard to a routinely prejudiced and biased version of history. Appropriating the images of settler women for her…