Film Categories: Disability

  • Let’s Rap

    “Women, speak your mind!” says one of the rappers in this collage of women of all ages and races who use the directness and power of rap music to express their views. These women, who rap in their own words about their own lives and beliefs present us with a lively, musical and often comical look at key issues facing women today. Let’s Rap! brims with energy, from its dynamic editing, witty set designs and colourful costumes right down to the pulsating beat which underlies its enthusiastic performances. Let by the powerful Montreal rap artist Freaky D, one of Quebec’s…

  • Kaleidoscope

    Kaleidoscope explores depression in an otherwise vibrant life. It is an original film poem edited to 16mm hand-processed B&W film that has been manipulated through tinting, toning and other cameraless techniques to reflect the fluctuations of living with a mood disorder. Footage collected during the Film for Artists and Film Farm residencies in 2016.

  • Sound Seam

    ‘Sound Seam’ is a film which gives voice to the idea that every surface, in particular parts of our anatomy, is potentially inscribed with an unheard sound or echoes of voices from the past. The soundtrack’s musical composition is interlaced with a voice-over which draws on Rainer Maria Rilke’s text ‘Primal Sound’, where he reflects on the possibility of playing the coronal suture of a skull with a gramophone needle. The overlapping voices of the narratives tell a forensic love story of yearning, encryption, inscription, decoding, memory and erasure. The film uses microscopic photography, scanning electron microscopy, and sounds of…

  • In Crystal Skin (Feature)

    In Crystal Skin provides a glimpse into the lives of four individuals living with the same rare disease in Bogotá, Colombia. Largely avoiding the broader context of disease science, the film instead delves into quiet, intimate moments between characters and the families that help care for them. Maria Alejandra, a charismatic 11-year-old, struggles to attend school despite her mother’s determined prodding. When Maria refuses to wake up for school one morning, the ensuing drama shows the difficult conflicts that arise between parents and children with rare diseases. The film moves across the city to three other characters: Miguel, a middle-aged…

  • In Crystal Skin (Short)

    In Bogotá, Colombia, a charismatic eleven year old named Maria Alejandra struggles to maintain a normal childhood despite the limitations imposed by a rare skin disease. Conflict between mother and daughter arises when Maria refuses to attend school early one morning. Click here for feature-length version of this film.

  • Brain Heart Lungs

    A meditation on the end of life. Brain Heart Lungs is a visual music film set to an original score by the composer-animator. In an era of electronic imaging, transplants, and implants, much has changed in the contemporary view of our physical selves. Brain Heart Lungs delves under the skin, beyond race, religion, and gender into the world of organs and their contemporary meanings.

  • Eight In One

    A study in synesthesia, matching colour and motion and gesture to sounds, correlating the auditory and the visual in relation to personal experiences with synesthesia.

  • Nine In One

    A study in synesthesia, matching colour and motion and gesture to sounds, correlating the auditory and the visual in relation to personal experiences with synesthesia.

  • A Celebration of Darkness

    A woman with a tortured past is triggered to take an unexpected walk down memory lane, she finds herself face-to- face with her inner child. Giving her a chance to make peace with her past. Does she find a way to celebrate darkness or does she become engulfed forever by it? In 2015, Jaene turned 40. This lead her to become introspective about her unusual life history. From a childhood of severe abuse, neglect, psychiatric institutionalization and being in care, she grew to become a street involved sex worker by 20. She met Elder, Isaac Day from Serpent River First…

  • Mino-bimaadiziwin (The Good Life)

    Mino-bimaadiziwin (The Good Life) came out of the Artist for Film residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point. I was excited about First Story’s walking tour with Elder Carolyn King. I was only able to participate with the aid of a wheelchair and allow others to push me around, it was my first time in a wheelchair. I documented this walk from that perspective with this manual timelapse on Super 8. Reconciling myself as a mixed-race indigenous Colombian settler “walking the red road” while being a person who lives with physical disabilities. Learning to live mino-bimaadiziwin as a settler to Turtle Island…