Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Dreaming House, The

    The filmmaker, his father and his youngest child walk past the house in Chinatown where the filmmaker’s father was born, triggering a sublime moment.

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Christina Battle

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. Christina Battle’s hand-processed, coloured and manipulated films explore the material and transformative possibilities of the film medium. Using techniques such as cameraless animation and collage, she “paints and sculpts” on film. Her work explores built and natural environments, history and the act of collective remembering, and a fascination with weather and storms. Study guide includes an essay by Janine Marchessault, York University. 1) hysteria (2006 35mm 4 min.) An unstable community leads to accusations and panic. Re-considering the Salem witch trials of 1692. Then doesn’t always seem so far off from now.…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Michelle Mohabeer

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. In Michelle Mohabeer’s films and videos, form and content are inextricably connected. Re-working the transformational film aesthetics of “third cinema,” Mohabeer’s experimental documentaries blend archival footage with personal memory, infusing each work with a signature pastiche of political consciousness, poetics and performance. Study guide includes an essay by Monika Kin Gagnon, Concordia University. “I recommend these films for researchers working on feminist theory, and the history of feminism, especially those with an interest in Canada and Canadian political identity or Caribbean/South American identity. These films will also be of use in the…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Gariné Torossian

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. In her lush, intricately constructed works, Gariné Torossian explores film form, hybrid film and video technologies, and themes of belonging, identity and the body. “Mining a rich palette of colours and textures, superimpositions and dissolves, mixing formats of Super 8, 35mm and video, [she] creates films that bridge the gaps between visual art, sound art, cinema and the rock video” (Lux Distribution). Study guide includes an essay by Ian Balfour, York University. CLICK HERE to download study guide. 1) Visions 2) Girl from Moush 3) Drowning in Flames 4) Pomegranate Tree 5)…

  • Artist Spotlight Series: Roberto Ariganello

    Available for purchase in the CFMDC Shop: https://www.cfmdc.org/shop. Roberto Ariganello was a passionate believer in the importance of independent film. Working in a variety of styles and genres, he experimented with narrative and documentary form, playfully exploring the use of appropriated imagery and the relationship between sound and picture. His solo and collaborative films offer humorous and thoughtful alternatives to the conventions of mainstream media and consumer culture. Study guide includes an essay by James Missen. 1) Yesterday’s Wine 2) Shelter 3) Non-Zymase Pentathlon 4) Contrafacta 5) Loteria 6) Gesture

  • Cuentos de Mi Ninez (Tales from My Childhood)

    “In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet launched a violent coup in Chile that overthrew the Marxist elected president Salvador Allende. Thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and exiled as a result. My family was among the many that were exiled in Canada.” – Francisca Duran In this experimental, autobiographical film, a young woman remembers and recounts difficult childhood memories of the 1973 coup in Chile when her family was forced into exile.

  • In the Kingdom of Shadows

    “In the Kingdom of Shadows” documents a paragraph being typeset on an early twentieth-century Ludlow Linecaster. The text is taken from Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of the Lumiere Brothers’ film “Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat” (1895). As the words melt into a pool of lead, the alchemical magic of printing is linked to that of cinema. Commissioned by LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) for their 25th anniversary program, “Film is Dead! Long Live Film!” Selected screenings: Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007; Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2007

  • Outsiders, The

    “A super-short Super 8 remake camps up the Coppola classic. An obsession of mine, and a lot of other girls, this movie touched my sense of belonging at a time when I felt I had none – teenagehood. Years later, when tomboy-ish has matured into gender-bending queerness, 21 grown ‘girls’ play at ‘boyhood’. Done DIY style, with an ‘unknown’ all-star cast of girls, this film embodies both a music video style of fast cuts and silent film intertitles – a post-post-modern experiment of complicity and resistance.” – Juliana Saragosa Selected screenings: London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (London, UK), 2006;…

  • Parricide Sessions, The

    In a therapeutic cinematic session of sorts, a gay son introduces his ex-lovers to his father – while examining his own fascination with the father figure.

  • Monsoon St., ‘77

    Monsoon St., ’77 tells the story of a day in the life of a young tomboy, Tina, who finds escapism in the rural desert of Arizona in 1977. To compensate for her unhappy surroundings, Tina lives in a rich imaginative world. She finds beauty in the natural landscape and comforts herself by summoning familiar figures from popular culture. These fantasies supply the happiness that is otherwise so lacking in her everyday life.