Film Categories: Families

  • The Flower and The Flood

    Following the seasonal cycle of a saffron farm based in the Fraser Valley, the film explores unmechanized labor through harvesting the delicate crocus stamen by hand. After an atmospheric river decimates the flourishing saffron crop in 2021, the flood waters temporarily return Semá:th Xó:tsa to the valley more than a century after its forced draining. The film traces the interconnected history of this sacred lake with the rebuilding of the saffron crop; cultivating community and the most expensive spice in the world. Collaborating with the saffron crocus and other plants through eco-processing and analogue processes, the family garden offers us…

  • Home for Christmas

    “Here is the quintessential Hancox ‘personal documentary,’ a film in which both the production and role of traditional documentary and autobiographical filmmaking are thrown into question. Using his camera to record a visit out east by train to spend Christmas with the family, Hancox …. used his familiarisation with the annual rtitual as a form of a script… Although we see the journey through the subjective judgement of Hancox’s eyes, it is his intent to transfer the material from original event to camera, to editing, and finally to the audience, so that the personal content of the film… becomes universal.”…

  • Never Sleep

    Muna is a timid nonbinary teenager with the ability to communicate with the spirit world through her dreams. Following the sudden death of their father Ibrahim, they chooses to stop sleeping to avoid having to confront his restless spirit. When Muna’s estranged aunt Naja re-enters their life, their collective grief meets the turbulent spirits of their ancestors, and the two family members must decide whether to remain comforted by avoidance or face their fear of emotional vulnerability head on. With Naja’s guidance, Muna manages to forge a path towards rewriting her understanding of memory, loss, legacy and familial responsibility

  • Home Movie

    Mostly close-up views of my house and family. (PL)

  • In the Alcove, at the Place

    For “In the Alcove, at the Place” Davis went back to the alcove (a private place in her room) and the place (the four corners of an intersection in Toronto, consisting of a house, two grocery stories, and a coin wash) every couple of weeks for nine months. In her alcove she filmed herself sitting in a chair; at the place she filmed aspects of its everyday life, making discoveries about it and becoming friendly with some of its inhabitants. In both alcove and place, there is change but also repetition. Among other things, the film concerns her growing familiarity…

  • In the Form of the Letter ‘X’

    This film is predicated upon the quasi-fictional discovery that Melville’s name and my name mean the same thing: both came from an old French verb “meler” meaning “to come together, to meet, to intersect” and both are names of towns at crossroads. By exhaustive translation, I reduce them both to “X,” the Greek letter chi (as in chimera), and the rhetorical trope “chiasmus.” The structure of the film is chiasmic (that is, it contains two parallel sections, but the second is reformed/deformed in reverse) and functions as a signature. The text is from Melville’s “Pierre” and is written chiasmatically in…

  • Is Dad Dead Yet?

    Is Dad Dead Yet? Scarlett, Dorothy and Lola want to know. Hollywood’s image subtext is the beginning for this broken narrative anti-dramatic film. Two women, a niece and her aunt, contemplate the familial cycles of relationships, death, secrets and confidences. Through their correspondence they question the power of images, trace authority’s abuse through various spheres, and engage in a dialogue with history. History itself is embedded in us, in our flesh. Its evidence in our lives is manifest through us and through the familial and political relationships and structures we carry forward. The two women offer each other a place…

  • It’s Me, Again

    “‘It’s Me, Again’ is an elaborate experimental ‘mockumentary’ on the phenomenon of the identical genome, commonly known as twins. Fleming presents interview after interview with an astounding array of twins as she examines the ancient mythologies of twins as a sign of evil vs. a sign of divinity, the molecular and genetic underpinnings of twins, the psychic connections between them and the problem of split personality. No stone is left unturned in this hilariously trumped up search for the complete, and completely crazy, taxonomy of the human.” – Toronto Festival of Festivals

  • Leftovers

    In “Leftovers”, Janine Fung’s wild narration about misunderstandings in her traditional Chinese family plays over images of her mother carving turkey. Also available on QUEERS ON THE VERGE.

  • Ley Lines

    “Taking her own last name as her primary organizing principle in approaching the past, Patricia Gruben has constructed one of the most inventive personal archeologies and family histories ever filmed. Over six years in the making, ‘Ley Lines’ eschews conventional narrative storytelling in favour of associative and cumulative revelation… “Gruben criss-crosses the globe as she traces the Gruben family back to Texas and then to Germany, only to end up in the present in Tuktoyaktuk. Her magical and unpredictable exploration makes innumerable stops along the way to consider such matter as satellites, DNA, geomancy, dowsing, Jimmy Dean, Hitler, the Thule…