Film Categories: Racism

  • Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)

    Inspired by San Francisco’s first Chinese American female physician, this film envisions the euphoria and despair of Margaret Chung and her insatiable desire for women and celebrity through her forays into drugs, sapphic surgeries, and queer flights of fancy. Image description: A black-and-white archival image toned warm purple, showing a woman dancing with arms raised to the side and skirt flared out in a circle.

  • Pur Laine

    PUR LAINE is a story about Ruby, a filipina, married to Roy, a Quebecois man, who dies and leaves her penniless. Ruby struggles with Roy’s drug addict daughter, Marie Claire, over who gets to sell Roy’s house, which also happens to be Marie Claire’s childhood home. A dramedy of errors, their collision reveals what they really want on the inside.

  • HOW YOU SEE ME

    Drawn from lived experiences and memories, HOW YOU SEE ME tells the story of a Chinese girl navigating her thoughts on white beauty standards. She seeks to understand her relationship to them, and express the damaging effects and harm that fetishizing Asian women causes.

  • Queer Isolation

    Queer Isolation is an award-winning short drama produced for the Barrie Film Festival’s Youth Virtual Media Arts Program about Noelle, a young Vietnamese-Canadian transgender woman forced back into the closet when she moves back in with her parents after losing her job due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Image description: Hands hold a series of Polaroid photos in muted colours.

  • Gay As In Happy: A Queer Anti-Tragedy

    An award-winning experimental autoethnographic documentary about queer joy, resistance, and resilience in the face of abuse, trauma, and transphobia.

  • Wash Day

    As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one’s outwardly appearance. Image description: A Black woman’s hands cradle long dark braids as water washes over them.

  • The Prince

    Olivia, a young tap-dancer and her uncle, Amir, an actor, struggle with what it means to be Middle-Eastern-American and artists in today’s racially divided world.

  • Away

    A new immigrant applies for a visa and endures the long and demanding wait for approval or denial. An epistolary poetic film that navigates the inner thoughts of an applicant’s last half of a two-year process for a residency visa in Canada. This long and tumultuous journey that for many can take at least 24 months from the application date demands a high level of resilience as it imposes dramatic waves of anxiety and loneliness. Away turns a sharp light into one of the consequences of the current process we have for economic immigration in Canada, a country with immigration…

  • Night and fog in Kurdistan

    Night and Fog in Kurdistan is a documentary by a Kurdish female filmmaker that follows seven Yazidi teenage girls who survived the 2014 ISIS genocide. The film traces their five-year journey from refugee camps in Turkey to resettlement in Europe, showing the effects of genocide, displacement, and the challenges of migration. Using illustration, self-storytelling, and first-person perspectives, the film lets the girls share their own experiences of survival and adaptation.

  • Private Flowers

    In 1832, a Canadian Infantryman was hanged for making love with another man. The victim’s rank was Private, and his name was Flowers. Commissioned by Toronto History Museums’ Artist Mentorship Showcase: Pride with Mentor Ashley Mckenzie-Barnes with additional support from the open space residency programme at the National Ballet, TD Bank, Pride Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council. Created as part of Awakening with Toronto History Museums Private Flowers is part of a series of art projects by Black, Indigenous and artists of colour, operating under the principles of anti-oppression, anti-colonialism and anti-racism and is part of the City’s efforts…