Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Memories That Sing

    “Memories That Sing” is how filmmaker Isabel Fryszberg captures the unsung stories and songs of her mother, just before her unexpected death. She reveals the songs and stories of her mother’s childhood in Poland just before the Holocaust. At the end Fryszberg becomes the song and story of her mother’s forgotten world.

  • Yin Yin/Jade Love

    “Yin Yin/Jade Love” is a documentary about a granddaughter’s discovery of her grandmother after she has died. The film simultaneously explores the emotional impact of the filmmaker’s last visit with her grandmother, her death, what was subsequently discovered about her extraordinary life, and childhood memories surrounding her and her home. The narration, by the filmmaker, is supported by past (VHS, 8mm, historical stills), present (16mm) and recreated (Super 8) images that are woven together creating a rich, densely layered, reflective collage. “Yin Yin/Jade Love” hopes to capture a portrait of the filmmaker’s Yin Yin and convey insight into the experience…

  • All U Can Eat

    Increasingly separated from his place of birth, a 70-year-old Jewish native of Quebec fuses personal and historical memory to create a sense of belonging.

  • My Mother at the Consulate

    “My Mother at the Consulate” is a montage-based exploration of absence and presence and the passage of time. It is an addition to a series of personal pieces about the filmmaker’s mother.

  • Her 13th Incarnation

    Told through a montage of personal photographs and video images, backed with dynamic, cutting-edge prose/poetics, “Her 13th Incarnation” is one Black, queer woman’s exploration of gender, sexuality, and the infinite fluidity of identity and desire.

  • Echoes

    A woman reflects on the off-beat moments and stirrings of girlhood experiences that shaped her life. Available on DVD on the compilation “Artist Spotlight Series: Michelle Mohabeer.”

  • Garden in Khorkhom

    “Garden in Khorkhom” is an impressionistic documentary inspired by the works of Armenian-American painter Arshile Gorky. The film is a tapestry of footage provided by Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat” and footage shot by Torossian. It is an homage to Arshile Gorky, focusing on his relationship to Armenian art and his mother.

  • Beat Truths: A Portrait of Graeme Kirkland

    Based on autobiographical writings, “Beat Truths: A Portrait of Graeme Kirkland” is a 3-minute film that aims to capture the dynamics of the artist’s street performance. It is a marriage of spoken word, street samples and drumming to cinema verite-style filming, creating a collage of sound and vision which builds to a cacophony that captures the essence and honesty of the artist and his art. Never subtle nor sugar-coated, and always in your face.

  • Slice of Primal Pie

    “Slice of Primal Pie” takes on the challenge of capturing the excitement and spirituality of the percussion group Primal Rhythm in film. Using mixed mediums (Super 8mm, 16mm, animated 35mm stills, colour, b&w, infrared) the images were first shot and edited, then Primal Rhythm composed live to them in the recording studio. As a result this “visual rhythm film” has a very organic feel, as opposed to the traditional slick approach to music videos. “Slice of Primal Pie” is as much about the universal appeal of their music as it is about these self-proclaimed “urban primates.”

  • No Soy un Oso (I Am Not a Bear)

    An interview and a debate over what makes the man a bear and why he would resist belonging to a group of big hairy men.