Film And Video

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https://hdl.handle.net/10315/26545

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Open Access
Fort Garry Lions Pool
(2024-11-07) Steel, Ryan Douglas; Djigo, Moussa
“Fort Garry Lions Pool” is an experimental film about two young women climbing the fence into a public pool at night. This paper tracks the creation of the film from its inception in 2020, production in 2022, up until its completion in 2024. The role of intuition as both subject matter and guiding creative tool is examined. This paper is also a reflection on the collaborative filmmaking process, charting the attempts made to foster a non-hierarchical working environment. The film's thematic and stylistic choices are also explored, centering around the symbolic role the Fort Garry Lions Pool plays in representing the revealing and understanding of trauma within a close friendship.
Open Access
The First Indigenous Female Pornographer
(2024-11-07) Whitecrow, Jamie Lee; Becker, Manfred
THE FIRST INDIGENOUS FEMALE PORNOGRAPHER is a mockumentary film running (13 minutes and 20 seconds) that blends and bends archival, pornography, re-enactments, and the only existing interview with Audrey Little-breast, “the first Indigenous female pornographer,” as she refuses to be labelled or represented as anything but herself. She is interviewed about her notorious pornography that exploits settler desire of “Imaginary Indians”. The film is a comedy that playfully engages the subjects of Indigenous identity, the politics of recognition, the “playing Indian” phenomenon, and Canada’s hottest piece of tail - The Beaver. We are invited to ponder how deeply historical and contemporary settler-indigenous relations impact our sexuality.
Open Access
Cherub
(2024-11-07) Shears, Devin; Greyson, John
Cherub is a 73 minute narrative film centred around a fat, single man named Harvey who comes across a gay magazine for “big men and their admirers” and decides to create an erotic pinup photo to be their “Cherub of the Month”. The film is almost entirely free of dialogue, and is made up predominantly of long, locked off shots that work to create a quiet but detailed tableau of this man’s life. Through both the narrative, the form, as well as the production of the film itself, I seek to explore the ways that image making can be a space of agency, desire and tension for fat, queer men.
Open Access
Mutual Pain
(2024-11-07) Keymanesh, Alireza; Veninger, Ingrid
Mutual Pain is a 29-minute, nonlinear, experimental psychodrama film about love's pain, social violence, and the effect of anxiety on perception. On a pitch-black night, John realizes that his wife had an affair with a mutual friend a few years before. There is now a big question mark over their child’s parentage. Storming out, he finds himself on an intense one-night mysterious journey. The voyage takes him to various places – the street, party club, bar, gambling room, etc. – where he finds himself in a maze of peculiar human beings and incidents. He experiences intense emotional, intellectual, and physical stimulation. Having lost everything and been beaten brutally by a thief, he falls motionless to the ground. Night becomes day. A beggar takes his shoes. Barefoot, he maniacally runs toward the forest. He is guided to his house where he lies down beside his wife in their bed. ‘John, John!’ She calls his name while giving him an intimate hug. ‘Shall we please be silent?’ he answers back.
Open Access
Kilometro 126
(2024-11-07) Lopez Gomez, Felipe; Becker, Manfred
Kilómetro 126 is a 16-minute hybrid short film narrating the day of a young couple as they spend their last time together in their hometown. Focusing on small intimate and fleeting moments from their everyday lives while juxtaposing these scenes with archival stills, the film intends to contrast the settlement of a town with its future, questioning the notion of development and progress in these rural areas. Kilómetro 126 portrays the dreams and aspirations of those who stayed in La Cumbre, a town that once stood for the development and progress of Colombia.  
Open Access
Chance Road
(2024-10-28) Irving, Eva; Wiseman, Howard
“Chance Road” is a feature film set in Toronto in 1999. It details the fictional life of a young boy who grows up without a father, and invents an imaginary father in his absence. He meets a young woman who teaches him how to read and write, and fosters his creative mind, but what he doesn’t know is that this young woman is the very person he’s been looking for––––his biological father, now transitioned to female. Written by Eva Everett Irving, this project was inspired by a short lifetime of personal lived experiences; from growing up in the church, being a queer child in the 90's, to living abroad and struggling with gender identity. "Chance Road" is a fictional family drama, and the culmination of Irving's MFA at York University.
Open Access
Truth or Dare
(2024-07-18) Owen, Rosamund; Wiseman, Howard
TRUTH OR DARE Truth or Dare is a feature length screenplay about Ruby (15) and her determination to reconnect with her sister Bella (10). After escaping her Cape Breton group home, Ruby jumps on a bus to Toronto. When she arrives on her sister’s doorstep, Bella’s adoptive parents immediately try to send Ruby back into care. Escaping into the ravine behind their house, Ruby meets several teenagers living in tents who survive by committing petty crimes. Secretly, Ruby begins meeting Bella in the family’s garage and Bella starts to remember their previous life together. Truth or Dare questions what family means after one sister is left in care, abused by the system, while the younger sister is adopted out. It is about loyalty, and love; and how we need family, but not necessarily in the ways we imagine.
Open Access
Take Me Somewhere
(2024-07-18) Marques Ximenes de Melo, Leticia; Evans, Barbara
Take Me Somewhere is a short experimental film that portrays impressions of the first track of the record “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven” by the Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Linked by voice-over conversations with five individuals from around the world who have personal connections to the music, the film reveals their stories through their memories as they associate the music with past times, places, and moods.
Open Access
The Magician
(2024-07-18) Gauvreau, Mathieu; Djigo, Moussa
The Magician is a 18 minutes short musical film. It follows Robert, a magician who performs cards and coin tricks in a struggling venue. He gets told by the venue manager that he needs to perform bigger illusions in order for them to attract the crowds that will allow them to keep the place open. What Robert hasn't told anyone is that he posseses real magical powers with which he can make anything appear out of thin air, fly away and even more. But these powers come at a price : a physical one as he feels pain whenever he uses them, but also a moral one as he so deeply wishes his passion for sleight of hands magic would be enough to impress the crowds. As the public gets to witness his unusual gift, he gets pushed to use his magic more and more to his detriment. It is a film about one's passion versus the demands of a public or, more broadly, making art in a capitalist society which validates profits over anything.
Open Access
Anamneses
(2024-07-18) Boos, Daniel Alexander; Ng-Chan, Taien
Anamneses is a short experimental documentary that explores new strategies of authentication in my method of working with actors. Grounded in philosopher Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory of the psychical matrixial borderspace, and influenced by the methodologies of filmmakers Chantal Akerman and Abbas Kiarostami, the film tells the story of a young man who discovers a need to confront the legacy of intergenerational trauma present in his family. Interweaving the live recordings of intimate conversations with self-described readers, the project pushes the limits of collaborative filmmaking to shed light on the therapeutic possibilities of unorthodox healing practices. Contrasting the matrixial qualities found in both Kiarostami’s Homework (1989) and Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015), I argue that Anamneses echoes features of both, and employs a collaborative approach inspired by Maya Deren’s endorsement of amateurism to engage in an instance of aesthetic transsubjectivity and wit(h)nessing (Ettinger). My thesis project is an attempt to carve out a matrixial space (Ettinger) pointing toward a method of filmmaking that substitutes for the logic of domination an ethic of connection and compassion rooted in the maternal.
Open Access
Aranyak
(2024-07-18) Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar; Wiseman, Howard
'Aranyak' is a ten-episode limited series that tells the story of an educated urban young man named Satya in 1930’s Kolkata who is forced by circumstances to take up the job of an estate manager in the desolate and dangerous forests of the Chhota Nagpur Plateau in Central India. 'Aranyak' depicts Satya’s 15-year-long stay in the forest, and his various experiences. During this period, Satya meets a number of forest dwellers who completely change his outlook towards life. In the beginning, Satya hates the desolation of the forest and its many dangers. But over time, he falls in love with the natural beauty of the terrain and the simple lives of its inhabitants. In the end, he is forced by his employers to destroy the very forest he had come to love so much. Satya returns to the city, distraught and dejected, but is unable to adjust to an urban life anymore. 'Aranyak' is an adaptation of noted Indian author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s iconic novel of the same name. The title literally translates to ‘Of the Forest’.
Open Access
Sunday, July 31st
(2024-07-18) Motazedi, Meysam; Barta, Tereza
My thesis film Sunday, July 31st is an exercise in abandonment—with it, I leave the lingering ghosts of a tumultuous childhood behind and finally step out of my father’s ubiquitous shadow. In a way, it is a dreamy retelling of our relationship. Framed through a restrained yet poignant lens, the narrative charts the journey of Pejman, the protagonist, as he embarks on a pivotal transformation from adolescence to adulthood. We observe as a seemingly insignificant misstep culminates in a powerful declaration of selfhood, throwing open the doors to a tenuous freedom that jars as much as it thrills. As the story reaches its coda, it exposes the restorative potency of truth, prompting the viewer to question their own notions of right and wrong, good and bad.
Open Access
Paris to Pyongyang
(2024-03-16) Lee, Helen Hyun-Joo; Longfellow, Brenda
Paris to Pyongyang is a 32-minute essay film about post-Korean War era recollections presented through dual narratives: a contingent of French artists and intellectuals visiting North Korea in 1958 who created literary and artistic works (including the feature film Moranbong) about the cross-cultural encounter, and a Korean War family separation story presented from the perspective of the filmmaker’s mother, Jung-Sook Lee. The filmmaker juxtaposes the events and reframes these works and Lee's wartime trauma through a contemporary, inquiring lens. The film proposes how contingencies of language and translation, gender dynamics, and cultural power affect our understanding of socio-political histories and personal, familial memory, in pursuit of new pathways for diasporic aesthetic expressions.
Open Access
Nine Easy Dances
(2023-12-08) Rosenthal, Nora Overhill; Veninger, Ingrid
“Nine Easy Dances” is a 19-minute docufictional film about a filmmaker’s attempt to stage an elaborate dance film with her parents. However, when her parents fail to live up to unrealistic expectations, she hires professional dancers to play them. A collaborative dance unfolds within her family home, as captured through behind-the-scenes and 16mm footage, all of which becomes gradually overshadowed by her mother’s metastasizing cancer. The hybrid film that emerges is a loving tribute to one family’s way of facing mortality and a darkly funny meditation on that impossible urge to hold onto the past; on what family archives can come to mean on the eve of loss.
Open Access
Puer Fungus
(2023-12-08) Miroshnik, Michail; Barta, Tereza
“Puer Fungus” is a character study of Eyal Glass, Once a tech marketer at Fiverr Inc, Eyal now embarks on running his own ambitious start-up, blending psychedelics and animal recovery into an experimental venture. Eyal's inspiration stems from his own transformative psychedelic experiences, which he believes hold the answer to society's deepest struggles. As the documentary unfolds, Eyal's life unravels in the face of rejections and his own feral ambition. The film candidly explores the complexities and blindsides of entrepreneurship, the toll it takes on mental well-being, and the consequences of chasing visionary dreams.
Open Access
Place d'Armes
(2023-12-08) Lint, Drew; Greyson, John
"Place d’Armes” is a 19-minute short film that explores the subject of chronic pain management within the structure of a narrative. The film follows Jean-Paul, a former longshoreman who has been injured at work and can no longer work at the docks. He now spends his days praying at various Catholic churches in Montreal. To make money, he works as a dancer at a strip club in the gay village. One night, a student named Scott watches him perform and pays for a private dance. This experience yields an emotional connection between Scott and Jean-Paul, which surprises them both, leading them to explore their inner lives and question the choices they have made. The film depicts a slice of Jean-Paul’s life, showing his resilience in coping with pain, and his renewed faith in the beauty of life.
Open Access
Nocturnal Tree
(2023-12-08) Mendoza Duran, Jharol Duglas; Kazimi, Ali
“Nocturnal Tree” is a 10-minute hybrid-fiction film that delves into a revolutionary fertility treatment developed by Manuel Mendoza Alguero, otherwise known as Mane, who is a local healer based in Los Remedios, Colombia. The film entices the viewer to consider both the truth and validity behind this mythical treatment. Through the eyes of two contrasting individuals, scientist Lily Noches and Mane, the film follows a non-linear narrative that juxtaposes rationality and mysticism, while exploring topics such as motherhood, love, and conception. The film's structure blends documentary and fiction elements, resulting in a plot that is shaped by both reality and imagination. This interplay between factual and fictional story creates a ghostly narrative that offers a fresh and thought-provoking interpretation of the narrator’s imagination.
Open Access
She Sings for the World
(2023-12-08) Bridge, Boyuan Han; Becker, Manfred
She Sings for The World is a 19-minute hybrid fiction film about a son that sets out to make a film about his mother, who was formerly known as the first Chinese Opera singer to have sung and translated Pingju Opera into English in late 1980’s China. Through an integrated examination of Pingju Opera mythology and auto-ethnography, She Sings for the World explores cultural identity translation between a mother and son through an intersectional application of hybrid realism, fossil archives, and ambivalence aesthetics. Combining the mother’s actual presence and story to the son’s virtual process of making a film about a son making a film about a mother, the thesis serves as an endpoint in the son’s attempt to find an authentic third space within cross-cultural translation, and a starting point in embracing interdisciplinary collaboration, cultural pluralism, and intercultural ambivalence as methods for examining cultural identity through film.
Open Access
Eden Ridge
(2023-10-04) Fryers, Caitlin Dawn; Buchbinder, Amnon
In 1876, Charlene “Charlie” Willows commits a crime that forces her to flee for her life. She disguises herself as a man and rides for the sanctuary of Canada. Before she can cross the border, she stumbles upon the scene of a serial killer - before he has left. She narrowly escapes with her life, merely knocked unconscious. Waking, Charlie finds herself in the custody of the men who hunt this killer: a doctor in the Canadian Northwest Mountain Police, a French scout, and two U.S. Marshals, who enlist her help to track down the murderer. But can she stop a killer while keeping her own crimes from coming to light?
Open Access
Doppelganger
(2023-08-04) Bapst, Donald Joseph; Greyson, John
Doppelgänger is a short film set in the mid-1980s about a young gay man’s visit to an alternative nightclub with a new wave/punk flair where he has an intimate conversation with a mysterious man several decades older than him. Returning to the revamped club decades later, the protagonist finds that his role has shifted when he meets a young man who reminds him of his former self. The film’s story, while fictional, draws on my Master’s thesis research and is inspired by my own experiences as a gay man who came out over forty years ago. In developing and finishing the film, I have fulfilled my personal goals over the course of my Master’s studies by learning how to manage a production on a much larger scale than I previously attempted. Intended primarily as a “proof of concept” for the longer feature script I am developing, the short version of Doppelgänger is meant to provoke conversations about how the transference of queer experience and wisdom across generations continues to evolve.