Film Categories: Work by Women

  • Mango Lemon Soda

    After spraining her ankle fleeing a terrible date, Zahrah is forced to spend an evening with her estranged ex, Tyler.

  • Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome

    The diagnosis of an eye disorder incited this meditation on fear and beauty. Glimpses of curious and creative souls peek out of countless hand-painted film frames. Infinite colors and textures burst, blend, and challenge the primacy of uniform vision.

  • Lion in the Wind

    Fugue for wushu in the West.

  • After Bed

    Pulsing flashbacks from the summer of love reawaken a queer California classic.

  • Last Light Breaking

    Words on stone monuments, floating through the frame, suggest that origin always has a powerful, lived base. Deeply charged images seem possessed by the memory of those who have passed through. This experimental film is an examination of the ties that have formed beyond the last light.

  • the smallest steps

    What does it take to have a voice? For women whose voices are often suppressed, the journey is full of challenges. Many quit along the way. But in Ottawa, Ontario, two law students and two survivors of violence have decided to take a stand and join the anti-violence movement. The only trouble is, they don’t know how to be activists. In their homes and on the streets, they take their first activist steps while veteran activists provide historical context to the movement. If they can overcome the personal and political barriers that threaten to derail them, they will join a…

  • The Translation is Approximate

    This video focuses a conversation that Naqvi witnessed between her aunt and a domestic worker over financial matters. For many reasons — the ambivalence of the situation, the respective socioeconomic positions of the two women involved in the scene, and the very nature of the recording, which careened between documentary and voyeurism — these images have long haunted Naqvi. In the Translation is Approximate (2021), Naqvi retrieves the original footage that she shot in 2013 and traces back her thoughts about what motivated her to revisit this material. This short video both provides insight into her approach and fundamentally questions…

  • Seaview

    Seaview (2015) is an experimental film which combines home video and captured footage from Karachi, Pakistan. Naqvi travels back to her family’s country of origin to compare childhood memories of this place with lived experience. In the first sequence, she shows video footage of her first trip to Clifton Beach in Karachi. The accompanying text describes her visit to the same beach seventeen years later, and the difficulties in trying to document this place, both as an image maker and as a woman. Naqvi confronts her own personal struggle of being caught between the ideals of Western and Eastern societies.…

  • Farzana

    Inspired by a true story, Farzana (2021) is a short narrative film which revolves around the relationship of two middle-aged women and how they navigate their work in the home. Charmaine is a psychotherapist who works from home, and she hires Nasreen as a domestic worker to help her maintain her household. Nasreen is a recent migrant who is dealing with financial precarity. When there is a crisis in Nasreen’s family, she asks for assistance from Charmaine, but lack of trust between the two women results in hostility and conflict. We see all of this through the eyes of Zinnia,…

  • PANDALAND: Making IT Count

    “PANDALAND: Making IT Count” is about how children become engaged and learn to grapple with big social issues. The filmmaker accomplishes this by encouraging playful exploration in a multi-media installation of 70+ toy pandas she created in her neighbourhood. The vibe of the film is lighthearted and optimistic. As the children initiate an election on behalf of the pandas, their experience embodies community building, demonstrates acts of civic engagement and conveys the important message that, by working together, even young children can effect change. The film is a life-affirming tribute to kids’ compassion and the birth of their activism! This…