Film Categories: Culture

  • VIA KARELIA

    Tracing back a lost identity, hidden in the forests of an abandoned war zone. How does a trauma get carried on from a generation to another and is there a way to stop the cycle? The filmmaker tries to understand how to heal from the pressures of the past by searching for their grandmother’s childhood home. Taking the journey with their parents, they find themselves in a village located in the old Karelia, now a part of Russia.

  • A Parent’s Wishlist

    A short film about upward mobility and working class aspirations, A Parent’s Wishlist focuses on something that could be found in many North American homes between the mid-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – a set of encyclopedias. Dragged from one city to another and across the country by my Chilean father, his Encyclopedia Britannica set came to symbolise his hope for a better life for both himself, and for me.

  • 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.

  • Manifestarsi

    The film investigates within the microscopic dimension the material component of billboards posted in Milan. The author, through a peculiar perspective – achieved with a unique optic – goes beyond the limits of vision, inviting us to fall into the alienating but enveloping physical structure beyond the mythical surface of the images. The cinematic result is an atmosphere that is not abstract but informal. Where the material reflects a visual condition devoid of perspective references on which to base metaphysical foundations: here the process suspends the essence.

  • Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)

    Inspired by San Francisco’s first Chinese American female physician, this film envisions the euphoria and despair of Margaret Chung and her insatiable desire for women and celebrity through her forays into drugs, sapphic surgeries, and queer flights of fancy. Image description: A black-and-white archival image toned warm purple, showing a woman dancing with arms raised to the side and skirt flared out in a circle.

  • 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.

  • 1000 Brazils of Truth

    Filmmakers Sheena Rossiter and Sandro Silva perform a spoken word song that’s dedicated to São Paulo, a megacity full of paradoxes. Through archive footage they filmed between 2011 and 2017, Sheena and Sandro show the highs and lows of a country that goes from being an emerging market, economic powerhouse, to one on the brink of collapse. By the time the filmmakers decide to leave Brazil in 2017, it is a country in the midst of a seemingly never-ending political corruption scandal and the worst economic recession in over eight decades. But, despite the shortcomings, Sheena and Sandro still miss…

  • Salt River Water Walk

    In February 2020, Sharon Day (Ojibwe) led a group of Water Walkers through the Arizona desert to walk for the Salt River. Through animation and live footage, this documentary travels with the Salt River Water Walkers, describing this Indigenous-led ceremony as it creates community and builds relationships with the earth through the shared goal to care for the water. The project was organized by the Museum of Walking. The film was made possible through the Museum of Walking, the Institute for Desert Humanities at Arizona State University, and Indigenous People’s Task Force.

  • Field Trip

    “Field Trip” is a travel diary on the American social landscape. The images consist of visual research for future film projects and were accumulated during my many location scouting trips to the United States between 1980 and 1995. Over time, I have come to regard this photographic archive as a collection of works of historical and personal value. Over the years, I began to rework the photographs. The more I handled and touched them, the less I thought of them as photographs and the more I saw them as something that could be hand-shaped, altered, transformed and re-imagined. With three…