Film Categories: Work by Women

  • Incantation

    “Originating in the lens of a discreet hand-crank Bolex camera, ‘Incantation’ is a delirious hand-processed weave of urban protest and contact dance that evokes the powerful spirit of personal and political resistance.” – Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, Toronto, 1997 “‘Incantation’ combines images from last autumn’s anti-Harris protest in Toronto with a dancer, creating a brilliant combination that illuminates the spirit and energy evident in the marches.” – Take One Magazine, Fall 1997

  • Inside/Out

    Joanna, a woman who decides to separate herself physically from the stress of the outside world, confines herself within her apartment. Her life inside is increasingly attractive in its calmness, balance, and stability. She maintains a mediated interaction with the external world through technology (a computer, answering machine and video camera). When a relationship that she has developed through her video camera demands an important moral decision, she finds she has to broaden her new way of being to encompass an engagement with the social, the real.

  • Intelligent Woman, An

    In her film “An Intelligent Woman”, Derko continues the concerns of her impressive debut film “The Scientific Girl.” Her new film is a complex, layered narrative set within the labyrinths of psychoanalysis. “This is a deeply intelligent, beautiful film, governed by the allusive structure of dreams.” – Toronto Festival of Festivals 1991

  • Interference

    “Interference” continues the filmmaker’s experimentation with time and stillness. A woman sits at her desk typing. Outside, the Canadian winter holds the land in its grip. Snow flurries drift past the window. The woman makes coffee, waits for the mail to arrive, sits in thought. We wait for the disaster to strike. At the end of the day, another woman enters the apartment and asks how the day went. The end. The accumulation of non-events gradually strips us of all the clichés of dramatic action, and we are made aware that our actual lives are always like this. Selected screenings:…

  • Introducing Elwy

    A silent “talking heads” film. Elwy Yost as a purely physical presence as he talks to the camera, often in extreme close-up.

  • Is Dad Dead Yet?

    Is Dad Dead Yet? Scarlett, Dorothy and Lola want to know. Hollywood’s image subtext is the beginning for this broken narrative anti-dramatic film. Two women, a niece and her aunt, contemplate the familial cycles of relationships, death, secrets and confidences. Through their correspondence they question the power of images, trace authority’s abuse through various spheres, and engage in a dialogue with history. History itself is embedded in us, in our flesh. Its evidence in our lives is manifest through us and through the familial and political relationships and structures we carry forward. The two women offer each other a place…

  • It Happened in the Stacks

    A noir melodrama about a librarian’s struggle as she encounters the capricious behaviour of a would-be kennel owner who is searching for a reference. Intrigue, romance, crime and punishment . . . For lesbian librarian Jane Putnam, it all happens in the stacks of the city’s oldest public library. Starring: Eileen O’Toole, Sky Gilbert, Sarah Stanley and Moynan King. Director of photography: Kim Derko. Sound design: Paula Fairfield. Awards: Bronze Award (Fantasy/Horror), Houston Worldfest, 1998

  • It Starts With a Whisper

    A celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving. “It Starts With a Whisper” was produced in the Six Nations/Brantford area, with an all-Native cast, and features locations on the Grand River which runs through the Six Nations Reserve. The film blends traditional Iroquois imagery, music and themes with motifs from contemporary, secular life. An original score and innovative visuals make “It Starts With a Whisper” a delight to watch, as well as a timely challenge to movie stereotypes of First Nations people. Eighteen-year-old Shanna Sabbath, who has grown…

  • It’s a Party!

    “It’s a Party!” was shot with a stationary camera facing the hallway and living room of a small apartment. Actors continually move in and out of the frame, while three sound units capture every word of deathless dialogue about those perennial party topics: art, politics, and sex. Chaos begins with the arrival of the first guest just as the hostess finishes washing her hair; subsequent guests crowd into any room but the living room, and a riotous conga line attempts to incorporate an irate neighbour. As the party winds down, some uninvited guests arrive and chaos reigns again.

  • It’s Me, Again

    “‘It’s Me, Again’ is an elaborate experimental ‘mockumentary’ on the phenomenon of the identical genome, commonly known as twins. Fleming presents interview after interview with an astounding array of twins as she examines the ancient mythologies of twins as a sign of evil vs. a sign of divinity, the molecular and genetic underpinnings of twins, the psychic connections between them and the problem of split personality. No stone is left unturned in this hilariously trumped up search for the complete, and completely crazy, taxonomy of the human.” – Toronto Festival of Festivals