Genres: documentary

  • 13 Eggs

    Over four years I collected footage to talk about my experience trying to make a baby. I managed to freeze 13 eggs. I stopped halfway through making this work because I failed and had to figure out how to make a film about failing in this commonly shared life goal. Grieving people who never were is harder than it seems.

  • MY FRIEND VINCE

    Vince is a street hustler. I’m the friend. Or am I? Set in raw, downtown Toronto in the early ’70’s, and co-directed by the late Howard Alk (The Murder of Fred Hampton, American Revolution II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Alk) The film explores the question of friendship in Vince’s world, a world built on cheating and lying, and then compares relationships formed in that world with relationships influenced by film making.

  • Conversations on the Lake

    Conversations on the Lake investigates politics of dwelling in rural Northwestern Ontario communities along the Lake Superior north shore. It was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2014 Female Eye Film Festival and was shown in film festivals internationally, including travelling festivals and in rural communities abroad and in Canada and the US. The film explores how the land, its waters, and its landscapes are valued by citizens who live and work in communities bordering the Canadian side of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater supply on the continent, expressing a sense of place unique to the region. With the landscape…

  • An Open Conversation

    “An Open Conversation” is a short story about the effects of pregnancy loss. In this introspective narrative, Idalina shares her own story of miscarriage and explores what her losses have meant to her. Fueled by the shame and lack of support she encountered she sets out to support others who have suffered through pregnancy loss and make it an open conversation.

  • ATALAYA

    “Atalaya” means watchtower in Spanish. It’s also the name of the Chilean islands where, in 1998, debris was found from the boat belonging to the filmmaker’s seafaring father, Gerry Roufs, lost at sea. It’s also a key word of the book written by her mother, Michèle Cartier, which recounts the search she undertook to find him. ATALAYA is the filmmaker’s pilgrimage to Cape Horn, camera in hand, memories flowing through her mind; an essay on her reflections on that inescapable grief, on how memory is affected by the presence of absence, and on how life naturally follows its course. Short…

  • Women of Resilience

    Women who have survived war, abuse, displacement and loss share their paths to resilience. 4 stories. 1 central thread – relationship makes us resilient. This documentary celebrates resilience in older women, who have lived through trauma and healed. The film features 4 older women who have gone through abuse, wars, prejudices and trauma, and they healed through relationship. The thesis is that human beings are designed to heal, and trauma interrupts that design. Secure attachment -a relationship within which someone feels loved, seen and valued- can repair the break and restore the healing design of the human brain and body.…

  • Arrival 1, Arrival 2

    This experimental essay film springs from the final days of December 2020 when I moved from Chicago to Toronto. The film documents my move and then continues on alternate paths, weaving through the liminal spaces of borders, sickness, interpellation, and dreams. Content Note: This film contains extended discussions about fatphobia and disordered eating. Specifically, this film contains descriptions of food restriction, idealization of thinness, and intense emotional and physical pain after eating. After 11:41 there is no direct discussion of disordered eating. Flashing lights throughout. Loud noises throughout.

  • A Tree Gets in the Way

    We are a determined species. We make plans and calculate in advance how to accomplish a goal. These calculations are not always completely accurate wherein something unanticipated can occur. On a warm spring day, I saw this house on a truck being moved to an empty lot. It looked like it would take maybe a half hour to position the house. That was until its progress was prevented by a tree in the corner of the lot. This delayed the operation until the tree could be removed.

  • Fire & Water

    For many years I lived near the village of Volcano, Hawai’i in a native Ohia rainforest. My house was about ten kilometers from the entrance to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park so I would go there whenever I could. Here was a place that displayed the essential forces of earth, air, fire and water, the very elements that form our existence. This had quite a profound impact on me, especially when new land suddenly appeared when only moments before it did not exist. Once the new land was established, birds, insects and seeds would establish themselves beginning with Hapuu ferns (a…

  • Air & Earth

    There are certain places that sustain me. Places where the elements of nature are so evocatively displayed, that my desire to return and experience them again never loses its hold. The Big Island of Hawaii is 20 degrees latitude north of the equator giving it a climate with a narrow range of temperatures along with continuous prevailing winds. Above 30 degrees latitude north and 30 degrees latitude south of the equator cold air from the Arctic and cold air from Antarctica mingles vigorously with hot air from the tropics. It is largely this interaction of cold air from the poles…