Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Float

    My goal as a filmmaker is to provide a positive voice for the trans,genderqueer, androgynous & gender-fluid folks not yet represented on screen, documenting our history, serving as a call to action to be recognized and respected by society at large, and forcing our culture to evolve. Float is inspired by experiences I’ve had swimming with other trans people, which is a very rare and special thing because of the complicated relationship lots of trans folks have with their bodies, especially in the context of swimming, bathing suits etc. This film is a symbol of hope for the community and…

  • STILLE STADT

    STILLE STADT (trans. Silent City) depicts the state of contemporary urbanity through an Everyman on the verge of a mid-life crisis, who goes through his life of routine both stricken and sustained by opera arias, that stand in for his thoughts and emotions that only he (and the audience) can hear. STILLE STADT in an allegory of modern existence that blends the real with surreal to explore how urban dwellers lose their connection with the environment, people, and praxis; and the suppression and containment of those lost connections by consumerism, distraction, and interiorization. STILLE STADT is an update and inversion…

  • Exposure

    “Exposure” is an experimental documentary that explores issues of race, sexuality and cultural identity. A dialogue between two lesbians of colour (Japanese-Canadian and Afro-Caribbean women) is intercut with photographs, texts, paintings and voice-over. Available on DVD on the compilation “Artist Spotlight Series: Michelle Mohabeer.”

  • Eye of the Mask

    “Eye of the Mask” reveals for Canadian audiences another view of life in Nicaragua. Set against the backdrop of the 1979 Sandinista revolution and the continuing contra attacks, many Nicaraguans were involved in the resurgence of popular theatre. It’s theatre based on both folkloric and experimental techniques. Judith Doyle and her crew focus on one of the most exciting and important of these theatre groups – Nixtayolero (Dawn Star) and its director, Alan Bolt. The film follows Nixtayolero as they travel to perform in remote, rural areas. Their work, and the response of their audiences, is juxtaposed with film of…

  • Learning To Milk A Cow

    When the filmmaker’s grandmother was 19, she was taken from Soviet Ukraine to Germany to work on a Bavarian farm under National Socialism. She had the luck and perseverance to survive hardships of the forced famine in her homeland and forced labour in the new one. The stories of her everyday life – learning how to milk a cow, falling in love – are interspersed with three generations of reflections on politics, longing, feelings of displacement and loss. Hand-processed black & white film, colour film, photographs and official documents create a montage of different perspectives. The hand-touch aesthetic combines with…

  • Looking For Carmen

    “In his most ravishing and heartbreaking work, Arriaga ventures again to his native Peru in search of a lost friend. Along the way he encounters the faces of those who speak about wounds that cannot heal—survivors recounting the deaths and disappearances of their beloveds during Peru’s civil war that pitted the communists of The Shining Path against the government, with both sides aligned against the people. “The dead have called us to find them,” remarks Lida Flores de Huaman, and Marcos follows her evocation, cutting memory trails into Peru that bring back the names of the disappeared. Using frames that…

  • Appropriated, The

    THE APPROPRIATED was shot in several mega shopping malls with a hidden camera during the annual pre-Christmas crush. An ongoing thread in Dudar’s films is patterned movement, sometimes choreographed, but in this case found and manipulated in post-production. A myriad of editing techniques reveal shamanistic-like rituals in the everyday actions and behaviors of the shoppers. First unnoticed, small gestures are revealed and turned into mystic hand signals. Sometimes the shoppers cross into mysterious dimensions, deftly undermining our comprehension of spacetime. Abetted by the editing, a preponderance of reflective glass throughout challenges our perception of what is real, and what is…

  • Festival of Light

    A record of illumination on the darkest night of the year, during an annual celebration held in Kensington Market, Toronto.

  • lay claim to an island

    Texts from the 1969 American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and letters from supporters propel an exploration of political yearning, emancipatory architecture and failed utopias. What does it mean to claim land that has more value as a symbol than as a potential home? And how does that symbol function beyond the boundaries of its geographic limits?

  • Absence is Presence

    Jelena, a young woman from Serbia who has a Bachelor degree in Economics, has been in Canada for a year. Without Canadian experience she works through so called “survival jobs” making her feel homesick. Her mother, Rada, comforts her in long Internet Skype calls telling her that she can always come back. One day, while walking her dog, Rada has a stroke in the streets of Belgrade. When she wakes up in the emergency she finds out that she has lost her dog and that her health issues might be more serious. Hiding the truth of her illness and the…