Film Categories: Performance

  • La dureté du mental

    “It’s a distraction for many, a profession for a few, when for me sport is my whole life. And if fighting is the reason you’re living. If every muscle clamors : train me, exercise, put on a sprint. Find a competitor or at least fight against a pole. It’s hard to get started but it’s otherwise difficult to stop. Even with your back against the mat. Never mind. You have to stand up and go further. You will now have to fight against yourself.” Transforming Olympic wrestling and pole vaulting Soviet films from the 1980s into expressive, painterly imagery, the…

  • The Thought That Counts

    The film follows Davis, grappling with profound grief and illness while struggling with memories of his late mother. His devoted husband attempts to uplift him with a heartfelt gift: a home to raise butterflies. As they navigate unexpected challenges in nurturing the delicate creatures (the cocoons already hatched), Davis confronts his past and finds solace in the transformative power of memories and the healing journey of letting go.

  • The Sky After Rain (Payam Feili)

    Based on a poem by exiled gay Iranian poet, Payam Feili, written after the arrest of his boyfriend during Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests.

  • The Sky After Rain (Shaya Goldoust)

    Based on Shaya Goldoust’s audio journals narrating her attempts at testing rigid gender boundaries, and the transphobic incidents which led to her leaving her family and motherland, Iran.

  • The Sky After Rain (Shyla Hope)

    Based on recorded audio interviews with Shyla Hope discussing her inner self journey to understanding and accepting her identity as a lesbian trans woman growing up in Iran.

  • Woven in Time

    Woven in Time features the wearable art creations of renowned Canadian fabric artist Evelyn Roth animated by her ‘moving sculpture company’ of dancers in collaboration with filmmaker Tony Westman. Evelyn won an ‘Etrog’ in the Best Art Direction category at the 1977 Canadian Film Awards for this timeless artistic classic. The allegorical visual narrative presents transformations of creatures that emerge from the sea, moving onto a vast desert landscape, then into a cocoon state only to be re-born into a lush landscape of color and eventual freedom.

  • Granville: A Portrait

    Granville: A Portrait is a fictionalized story based on the real life experiences of a Black Male Stripper, Granville Johnston. While dancing in a strip club, Granville takes a fall, injures his leg and is taken to hospital, so the narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks that illuminate his story.