Film Categories: political activism

  • No You Cyant Touch It!

    Shot in black-and-white and sepia tones, “No You Cyant Touch It!” incorporates an understanding of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality as it deals with Black women’s favourite obsession – hair – from an interesting perspective. The film’s creatrix and subject examines the link between her locks, her Black, queer identity, and other people’s understanding/assumptions of who she is and where she “belongs.” The stark tones and political subject matter are mediated by Rhizome Syndrigast Coelacanth Flourishing’s lyrical poetics.

  • May 13th

    “May 13th” is concerned with a college student’s daily routine at a recreational centre and the ensuing violent assault by a stranger. The voices of four women, expressing their own feelings and relating their own experiences, respond to the act of violence.

  • Ride

    “Ride” was filmed during the Friends for Life Bike Rally, an annual fundraiser for the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation (www.pwatoronto.org). It was filmed entirely with a Super 8 camera pipe-clamped to the bicycle basket of Leif Harmsen’s Canadian Tire Special, over 700 km between Toronto and Montreal. The blissful and high energy six-day event whips the many riders into top shape and inspires many others to generously support a great charity. It also connects two of Canada’s greatest cities with simple, environmentally friendly pedal power.

  • Concrete and Sunshine

    “Concrete and Sunshine” is a documentary about the human geography of incarceration which challenges the function of the prison system. Arguing that an underlying problem of incarceration is the isolation of the individual from the rest of society, “Concrete and Sunshine” focuses on interviews with men housed in 24-hours of solitary confinement in California’s “super-max” prison, Pelican Bay State Prison. Cousino questions the motives for the use of solitary confinement and the impact it has on the individuals celled within. Additionally, “Concrete and Sunshine” relates the penal system’s use of solitary to the economic isolation experienced by both communities that…

  • Soul Circus

    Dylan Griffin ventures into a world of chaos and beauty when he takes a job on the production crew of the world’s only African-American circus. Armed with a Super 8 camera, he documents the last day of a cross-USA tour as ringmaster Casual Cal talks about life with the Soul Circus.