Film Categories: Families

  • My Own Private Lower Post

    “My Own Private Lower Post” is the story of Duane Gastant’ Aucoin, a two-spirited Tlingit, as he seeks to understand how his mother’s trials at Lower Post Resident School have influenced his life. As she shares her story, he comes to understand how he too is a survivor. Haa Koosteeyi (Our Tlingit Way) is where mother and son find the strength to overcome and truly survive. “My Own Private Lower Post” won an Honourary Mention (runner-up) for best BC Short at the 2009 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. This groundbreaking video has been called “enjoyable, emotional and historic” (Whitehorse Star review).…

  • Lacuna

    Lacuna: 1. an empty space or a missing part; a gap; an absence. 2. a discontinuity in an anatomical structure. Selected screenings: WNDX Festival, Winnipeg, MB, 2009; Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, Montreal, QC, 2009

  • Northland: Long Journey

    A film about environment, family and justice. “Northland: Long Journey” is an evocative meditation on filmmaker Edie Steiner’s quest for new truths regarding her father’s death from occupational illness three decades prior. The film revisits an early National Film Board of Canada film, where her mining father is posed as a heroic worker. He later died from exposures to workplace toxins, but his death was officially denied to be related to his work environment. A generation later, new scientific evidence amended the original legal and medical judgments, and the process of making the film became an appeal for justice. Filmed…

  • Our Future Is Bright

    This atmospheric short film alludes to a catastrophic event that has left two women grief-stricken and isolated in a barren snow-covered wilderness. Their intimate life together is shaken when they discover a man lying unconscious in the frozen terrain. For Bria, the older of the two women, he represents hope for the future and the possibility of a child. For Renee, he threatens to disrupt a life that has given her refuge from the traumas of violence. Renee must ultimately decide between having a child and her personal desire to remain free from emotional attachment. Canadian Society of Cinematographers Award…

  • Lot 22, Concession 5

    Hand-processed 16mm film imagery, tinted, toned, and transformed, is combined with memory fragments of a rural past to create a visual poem about family, place, and time. Filmed at Philip Hoffman’s Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario in 2008, with sound design by Edmund Eagan. The title refers to the lot and concession number of my great-grandfather’s farm in Westport, Ontario, as recorded in the 1911 census. The voice is a fragment of the past, taken from an old recording of my father, Leonard McCann, who passed away in 1992. Selected screenings: 8th International Festival Signes de Nuit, Paris,…

  • One, two, three, dusk

    “ONE, TWO, THREE, DUSK” is a visual and auditory exploration of one woman’s life and relationships in three parts from birth to motherhood to death.

  • im sommer sitzen die alten (in summer they sit, the elderly)

    Prompted by the death of her grandmother, Magdalena, she visits Gertrud, her grandmother’s life partner. Gertrud gives Petra an old suitcase full of memorabilia. Petra, in an attempt to protect memories from fading, decides to make a filmic ode to the love Magdalena and Gertrud shared. Based on the poem “im sommer sitzen die alten” by Ulrike Almut Sandig. German with English subtitles

  • Uncle Denis?

    Director Adrian Goycoolea looks back on the life of his great-uncle Denis Pratt, a.k.a. Quentin Crisp, the notorious artist, writer and raconteur. Interviews with the extended Pratt family, Super 8 footage, and letters and essays by Crisp reveal the dual personae of the man who penned “The Naked Civil Servant” and other literary works that unapologetically revealed his sexuality. “Uncle Denis?” is a fascinating personal portrait of one of the most significant queer icons of the 20th century.

  • Marionettes, The

    In November 2008, Californians narrowly voted to abolish equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. Throughout the campaign, Proposition 8 advocates repeatedly claimed that marriage equality harms children. This film is a creative response to that contention. “The Marionettes” uses striking marionettes, ornate miniatures, and stylized chiaroscuro lighting to tell the story of a little girl’s puppet show and a fantasy world where parental disapproval casts an unseemly pall.

  • Ampoule Brulee, L’

    This short film is a poetic meditation on the end of life as represented by the filmmaker’s grandmother. The grandmother, in her rocking chair, reaches out for the single light that illuminates her, expressing her determination and also, as the light goes out, the reconciliation to her own death.