Film Categories: Work by Women

  • Pioneers of X-Ray Technology

    “In Ann Marie Fleming’s ‘Pioneers of X-Ray Technology’ (a film about Grandpa), super-8 home movies are only one part of the film’s cooly complex structure. The first time I saw ‘Pioneers’ it looked like an uncomplicated portrait of Fleming’s grandfather, Dr. Ernest To, who was a photographer, amateur filmmaker and Hong Kong radiologist. On second viewing, the film’s ambivalence towards its subject becomes clear. “Fleming (‘You Take Care Now,’ ‘New Shoes’) is known for the ‘quirkiness’ of her films, but she’s above all a brilliant editor, both cinematographically and conceptually. Like nearly all her films, ‘Pioneers’ benefits from remarkable compression.…

  • Pleasure Film (Ahmed’s Story)

    “In a compelling narrative, a woman relates the trials of a hungry man who will go to great lengths to be fed. This latest work by Ann Marie Fleming once again demonstrates the artist’s delicious sense of the absurd. Featuring Valerie Buhagiar, Howard and His Doghouse and the off-screen presence of Ahmed, a master of tall tales.” – Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, Toronto, 1995

  • FREE JOAN LITTLE

    Free Joan Little tells the story of the 1975 groundbreaking case of Joan Little (pronounced Jo-Ann), who was one of the first women in U.S history to be acquitted for using deadly force to resist sexual assault. Joan was a Black incarcerated woman in North Carolina who killed her white prison guard who was trying to rape her. Little’s murder trial became an international cause célèbre, uniting fractured social movements—Civil Rights activists, feminists, Black Power advocates, and death penalty opponents—in an unprecedented intersectional coalition that challenged systemic racism and sexism in the criminal justice system.

  • The Years

    THE YEARS is a poetry film exploring life stages through various ages as experienced by different actors in a non-chronological order and time frame. Historical Super 8mm film footage mixes with digital recordings as the poem is voiced by the filmmaker/author. Questions of impermanence and the instability of time frame the histories indicated by the filmed images gathered by the artist over years of recorded witnessing.

  • Broca

    Using poetry, interviews with psychologists and survivors, and corporeal imagery, Broca is an experimental documentary hybrid that explores how the mind-body connection is altered after trauma. The Broca’s Area in the brain is involved primarily in speech production. During a traumatic event or when trying to recall a traumatic event, this area shuts down. This makes it harder for a survivor to talk about what’s happened. Our project offers a platform for survivors to tell their stories both verbally and non-verbally.

  • Linea ver

    Spring sculpts their fierce emergence. Aspen, cedar, red oak, lichen (and others) phytograms on super-8mm tri-x film. Language: plants

  • diario de verano

    diario de verano is an exploration of neighborhood flora in Tkaronto, focusing on Kensington Market, Parkdale and Wallace – Emmerson, areas we live and move through. Experimentation with abstract movement and the physical, compositional properties of foraged materials, strengthened our community/kinship to the land and each other. Artistic practices were explored and shared through gathering rituals, stop motion animation and phytograms, creating complex layers of ourselves intertwined through our latinx identities in this short film. Language: plants

  • Black Bird

    Black Bird captures a community of crows living in East Vancouver – commissioned by Echo Park Film Centre North and Cineworks for their Vancouver Minute Project 2021. The project asked filmmakers to reflect on living in so-called Vancouver, BC. Brittney chose to focus on their current and past relationship with the crows in the city. Growing up in East Van they remember seeing the magic of the sky being filled with hundreds of crows every night as they made their daily migration back to Burnaby Lake. When they reflect on their experience growing up and living in East Van the…

  • Custom Trailer Series: Austin Powers

    Exploring écriture feminine and the patriarchal biases still present in commercial cinema, “Custom Trailer Series: Austin Powers” reimagines the original Hollywood film through the structure of a starburst quilt pattern. The work exists both as a material object and the visual representation, drawing attention to the materiality of the filmstrip This is the first in a new series that reimagines Hollywood trailers as film quilts. Previous films made from quilts include c: won eyed jail (NYFF 2005) and Athyrium Filix Femina (For Anna Atkins) (NYFF 2016).

  • The Sky After Rain (Payam Feili)

    Based on a poem by exiled gay Iranian poet, Payam Feili, written after the arrest of his boyfriend during Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests.