Film Categories: Community

  • My Gentrification

    “A voice tells us: “a friend of mine drew a circle on a map and said, ‘this is where you wanna live’.” The this refers to a subsection of Toronto between Bathurst and Dufferin streets, but it could just as easily refer to the city as a whole, an area bustling with life. Or, at least it did. Marcos Arriaga’s “My Gentrification,” explores the changes in the ever-gentrifying metropolis through the lens of archival footage they procured through decades of documentation. There’s a real Jonas Mekas vibe to Arriaga’s film, which is replete with voiceover narration and grainy celluloid archival…

  • still

    A meditation on holding on in isolation, made with a personal cell phone and limited equipment at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic in Ottawa.

  • The Story of the Dancing Heart

    A poetic, flowing Heart dances with ease day and night. A busy, curious Mind sets off on a journey to learn to dance as rhythmically and as elegantly as Heart. But the more desperate he becomes, the harder it gets. Maybe Mind will never encapsulate Heart’s lightness and innate delight. Or maybe music will show Mind the ways of the Heart.

  • Originate and Recompile

    In 1962 Ernesto De Martino travelled to the South of Italy for his ethnographic research and shot “La Taranta”. A study around women who were poisoned by a Trantula bite while harvesting in the fields. The remedy against the deadly poison was a folk dance called Taranta. The women danced the poison out of their bodies with the help of local musicians and priests. Studies around this phenomenon have highlighted that, in the majority of cases, these women were suffering severe mental illness and hysteria due to sexual abuse and poverty. In present-day Italy a similar dynamic has resurfaced, uncovering…

  • Private View

    A view out my window and worries in my head. — A PRIVATE VIEW is a site-specific collective screening series curated by John Woods and created as a part of Iris Film Collective’s IN HOUSE series. What is private space and what is public? In the subdivided landscape of Vancouver privacy can be evasive, but each of us views our home as our castle and our homes’ windows give us a unique vantage point that is ours and ours alone. Iris member John Woods gave a roll of expired colour film stock to each of the members of the collective…

  • The Eyes of Summer

    In a small and remote hamlet in Southern Sri Lanka, a little girl develops a curious friendship with a spirit who lives in an abandoned house. This film was shot in my mother’s village in Southern Sri Lanka—shortly after the civil war in 2010. Collaboratively developed with members of my family there, a narrative was improvised around an investigation into my mother’s interactions with spirits in the community during her childhood. Landing somewhere between horror fiction and “spectral” ethnography, the film describes a population reeling from devastations of the past, where distinctions between the living and the dead are thinning.

  • Pur Laine

    PUR LAINE is a story about Ruby, a filipina, married to Roy, a Quebecois man, who dies and leaves her penniless. Ruby struggles with Roy’s drug addict daughter, Marie Claire, over who gets to sell Roy’s house, which also happens to be Marie Claire’s childhood home. A dramedy of errors, their collision reveals what they really want on the inside.

  • Contents under Pressure

    An anxious young party-goer finds love at a party, but after committing a party faux pas, is destroyed in a washing machine accident. From here, the project pivots, self-conscious and needing to recast its hero, who quickly has an existential crisis (“what’s my motivation?”). A poetic, quirky, singular meditation on identity and personal history, populated with the beautiful vistas of Atlantic Canada.

  • Queering Yoga

    Queering Yoga tells the story of 6 Queer/Trans/QTPOC yoga teachers and their personal stories of healing, transformation, and yoga journey. Themes explored include: What is the intersection of Queer, Trans, and QTPOC identities and yoga? What does empowered and embodied visibility look like for the Queer, Trans, and QTPOC communities? What does it mean to decolonize one’s yoga practice and why is this important? Queering Yoga embraces an intersectional lens to explore identity, personal, and community transformation. The film positions Queer/Trans/QTPOC yoga teachers as important voices and leaders in current day yoga conversations and spaces committed to ending racism, homophobia,…

  • Beyond Curls & Kinks

    Beyond Curls & Kinks follows a group of women who are challenging beauty standards and empowering each other and the next generation to embrace their coily kinky curly hair. The film explores the complex relationship they have with their Afro-textured hair and issues such as self-esteem, confidence and identity. It also challenges society to see women and girls beyond their curls & kinks.