Film And Video

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/26545

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 156

Access status: Open Access ,
Nene (Little Girl)
(2026-07-24) Ferderber, Vann William; Djigo, Moussa
Nene (The Tagalog term for “little girl”) is a genre-bending narrative short film, blending Filipino family dynamics and 1970s horror cinema aesthetics. This film utilizes both contemporary digital imagery and analogue 16mm film stock to “reanimate” a 1970s low-budget Canadian vampire film through the story of Emily, a young neurodivergent Filipino girl, and her struggling single mother Josie. As the 12-minute narrative unfolds, Emily’s hyperactive imagination triggers surreal paranoia, and the celluloid nightmare begins to bleed into reality through a diasporic lens. This film represents my inward exploration of personal themes, including second-generation diaspora, urban childhood upbringing, and folklore as a lens to explore the liminal dimensions of diaspora.
Access status: Open Access ,
Names Have Been Changed
(2026-07-24) Beaulieu, Christopher; Greyson, John R.
"Names Have Been Changed" is a narrative short film based on medical records documenting my participation in a psychiatric study as a teenager. The film follows Paul, an eighteen-year-old university student who enrolls in a medical study involving a course of SNRI antidepressants, and Hanna, the resident psychiatrist responsible for documenting his treatment. Drawing from these records, this project seeks to examine the relationship between lived experience and clinical documentation through narrative filmmaking. While clinical records present experience through detached authoritative language, this film uses narrative structure and visual form to place this language alongside the reality it attempts to describe.
Access status: Open Access ,
ukobola lina/when do you return?
(2026-07-24) Mwambu, Sonya Ruth; Greyson, John R.
ukobola lina/when do you return? is an 18-minute performance film that archives the origin story of the Bagisu people and attempts to decipher the riddle of a family’s intertwined histories within the diaspora. Developed through methods of process cinema, the immersive performance combines eco-processed 16mm film and digital projections onto mosquito netting and traditional fabrics, live writing, and sound. We scan for fragmented radio frequencies that only reveal themselves in waves. Expressions of light, time, space and ritual must take place as the work becomes a test of memory to recover hidden wisdoms. I decipher what I can through performance of writing, documenting, translating, asking, and I am reminded, agenda gy’amanyi tazibiriwa budde / that one who travels to a familiar place does not worry about arriving in the dark, and that it is within these surreal abstractions of words, images, and sounds that my identity, culture, language, love, grief and hidden wisdoms are irrevocably entangled in non-linear time and space.
Access status: Open Access ,
Sankofa: Echoes from Home
(2026-07-24) Richardson, Daniel; Evans, Barbara
This essay film follows a recently arrived student from Ghana navigating displacement in Toronto, using the renaming of Sankofa Square as a point of inquiry into memory, migration, and belonging. Drawing on the Akan philosophy of Sankofa, “to return and retrieve”, the film moves between personal reflection, urban observation, and cultural and historical dialogue to explore what it means for an African philosophy to be embedded within one of the city’s most contested public spaces. Through a non-linear structure that combines voiceover, interviews, and symbolic imagery, the film traces the transformation of Sankofa from a culturally grounded symbol into a named urban site, foregrounding the tensions between representation, translation, and absence. Positioning the recent migrant experience as both subject and lens, the film becomes an act of listening and reflection, asking what it means to carry memory across borders and how histories are negotiated within contemporary urban life.
Access status: Open Access ,
Not Everything Disappears
(2026-07-24) Jafarizadeh Dezfoulian, Pouyan; Hoffman, Philip J.
"Not Everything Disappears" is a short film about the work of artist Peter Malt at a psychiatric hospital in Berlin Germany in 1986. The film follows his daily activities as he paints the walls of the hospital while patients surround him. He is accompanied by his partner Jane, who films the painter’s work and the interactions with the patients. At the start of the film, it is difficult to make out exactly what we are witnessing. There is a barrier between the painter and the patients, but as the film progresses the rhythms of the day to day activities reveal the patients participation in the daily creations by the painter. Slowly we begin to understand that the figurative abstract characters he paints are the patients in the hospital and their experiences. In the end the film reveals that more power seems to be given to the patients, over the span of the film, through the collaboration that has taken place. The observed has become the observer.
Access status: Open Access ,
A Friend
(2026-07-24) Zheng, Yu; Johnson, Susan C.
A Friend is a nine-minute fictional short film about Sid, a Chinese man living in Toronto, whose quiet life is unsettled by a series of mysterious phone calls. As reality, memory, and an unfinished farewell begin to intertwine, a long-buried grief gradually surfaces. Told through a nonlinear structure, the film uses everyday spaces, natural light, handheld camerawork, and restrained performances to blur the boundaries between reality and hallucination, life and death. Centred on the making of the film, this thesis combines personal experience, Buddhist philosophy, and filmmaking practice to examine the creative process from script development to post-production, while reflecting on themes of farewell, memory, and emotional experience in cinema.
Access status: Open Access ,
Rideau
(2026-07-24) Kahnamouee, Amir; Montanari, Fabio Basso
Rideau is a feature-length dark comedy screenplay about a civil servant cushioned by routine, quietly unraveling in a city that mirrors his inertia. Inspired by my years working in government, Rideau forms the basis of this thesis’s inquiry into the relationship between lived experience and dramatic form. Autofiction reshapes personal memory into narrative, whereas screen storytelling is typically guided by Classical Hollywood conventions that prioritize causality and character transformation. Through the development of Rideau, this thesis investigates what tensions and alignments emerge when lived experience is shaped into contemporary dramatic form.
Access status: Open Access ,
Young Poirot: An Origin Story
(2026-03-10) Synenko, Anna; Montanari, Fabio
Young Poirot: An Origin Story (YP) is a one-hour television pilot and bible, that reimagines the early life of Agatha Christie’s iconic detective, Hercule Poirot and attempts to construct an origin narrative in the absence of clear canonical or textual precedents. As such, the idea of crafting a prequel became a critical and creative inquiry into how one builds narrative and character depth when there is little-to-no backstory that exists in the original materials. Imagining Poirot’s past is a study in balancing creative innovation with ethical responsibility. Through a dialogue with past texts, outmoded genres, and audience collective memory, Young Poirot (YP) balances creative innovation with a sense of responsibility in the storytelling process. The script and bible proposes not simply a narrative prequel, but a critical reflection on adaptation as a transformative and morally complex act. We see how tensions between invention and authenticity, past and present, coalesce.
Access status: Open Access ,
My Mommy Movie(s)
(2026-03-10) Ruscinski, Simon Edward Guy Paul; Becker, Manfred
My Mommy Movie(s) is an essay film about the difficulty of capturing a human life and transforming it into a work of cinematic entertainment. The film utilizes a variety of different forms and filmic styles to attempt to tell a non-traditional story of a relationship between mother and son. This hybrid approach included the use of archival material from my childhood, discarded footage from my own personal archive as a filmmaker, public domain footage and music from the internet, verite-esque documentary footage of the present, as well as the footage from an unreleased fiction film about my mother. The combination of these seemingly disparate sources all work to try and honestly capture the uncapturable, the essence of an individual.
Access status: Open Access ,
What if an Hourglass Felt Like an Earthquake?: Explorations in Queerness and Vibration
(2026-03-10) Logue, Deirdre Margaret; Davila, Patricio
This thesis explores the evolving relationship between the body, queerness, performance for the camera, and vibration through experimental media art practices. The intention behind the creation of the artworks was to initiate a major shift in my artmaking process, one that moved beyond familiar methods and rationales, prompting a deeper inquiry into why and how I make art. Using everyday objects, image, sound, and vibration, both in physical and affective terms, I investigate the body as a central subject, focusing on its relationship to circumstance and sensation. This process-oriented approach allows for a destabilization of previous working methods in favour of new experiential and conceptual ground. This support paper uses experimental writing methods to reflect on my artistic lineage, drawing from queer, feminist, and art theory to contextualize the works and their development. It examines the theoretical, historical, and personal frameworks that inform the exhibition and my ongoing exploration of the sensorial to expand the possibilities of accessibility.
Access status: Open Access ,
Imperial Green
(2026-03-10) Lacosse, Zachary Daniel; Becker, Manfred
Imperial Green is a 66-minute experimental autofiction film by filmmaker Zachary Lacosse, loosely structured as a reimagining of his life prior to relocating to Toronto. Set in Metrotown, a suburban district of Burnaby, British Columbia, the film foregrounds a place that has exerted a formative influence on Lacosse since childhood. Through a personal and introspective lens, the work explores struggles with Christian-tainted identity and the ways these internal tensions shaped his relationships with his mixed-Indigenous father and his fiancée at the time. Conceived alongside his decision to attend York University, Imperial Green reflects Lacosse’s desire to enter the world as an individual, charting the emotional and psychological pitfalls inherent in the process of becoming. Shot in high-framerate 60fps, it is a diaristic retelling of a crucial point in the filmmakers life, as well as an examination on urbanization, the automobile, and masculine impotence.
Access status: Open Access ,
Golden Boys
(2025-11-11) Griffin, Steven Paul; Montanari, Fabio Basso
Golden Boys is a 102-page fiction screenplay centered around Salem and Caleb, two teenage boys and best friends, who are spending one of the last days of their summer break together, as their lives are about to move in different directions. Both boys struggle with self-image, insecurities, young love, personal expectations, and attempting to maintain their slowly disintegrating friendship. The boys' long-lasting friendship comes to a head, and they gain perspective on how instrumental the other has been in shaping their lives. Taking a traditional American teen comedy and reframing it within a modern Canadian context, this film explores how collective memory and cultural influences recontextualize our identities amidst societal changes in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Developed using primary and secondary research, as well as first-hand accounts, this script reflects a personal journey of artistic self-discovery and acceptance, echoed in the escapades of the central characters. This paper documents the process of reaching the idea for Golden Boys, finding a specific film reference as a starting point, and navigating the merging of genre and social awareness within the cultural context of a grander film lexicon and an authentic Canadian portrayal of Wasaga Beach.
Access status: Open Access ,
Magpie Online
(2025-11-11) Dovolis, Christina Georgia Tia; Ng-Chan, Taien
Magpie Online is a new media installation that explores the migration from material public spaces to online environments, focusing on the multiplayer platform Decentraland. Much like “real” life, users create avatars and construct homes, parks, clubs, and other urban infrastructures. One user likens Decentraland to a magpie’s nest—an externalized archive of selfhood, where each digital object becomes a reflection of identity. The installation weaves together interviews with four Decentraland users, platform footage, original animation, machinima, and archival imagery tracing the evolution of North American public space. Drawing from urban analysis, Magpie Online explores how virtual worldbuilding reshapes our sense of belonging, embodiment, and community. How is identity forged in digital realities? What do we gain—and lose—when our social lives are mediated online? And, to what extent should we distinguish between “real” and “virtual” life? Magpie Online invites viewers to consider what it means to be part of a world increasingly built on-screen.
Access status: Open Access ,
LAAT
(2025-11-11) Zargar, Saeid; Barta, Tereza
LAAT is a short hybrid documentary that offers a glimpse into the world of Tehran’s elderly lutis and the emotions they confront in the twilight of their lives as they reflect on their past. The film explores their role in the Iranian 1953 coup, a perspective that is often overlooked, seen through the eyes of a former child labourer who witnessed the events firsthand. Through interviews with participants and eyewitnesses, as well as archival footage, it explores how a gang of luti figures helped ignite the chaos that led to the fall of Mohammad Mossadegh’s government, a pivotal moment in the country’s political history that not only disrupted the elite but also shattered the hopes and dreams of the working class, leaving a deep wound on the soul of modern Iran, one that has yet to heal. This film, grounded in research on different aspects of luti culture and history, as well as its portrayal in post-coup Iranian cinema, seeks to offer an authentic representation of the luti character, a rebel figure whose presence in both politics and cinema has been marked with controversy and debate.
Access status: Open Access ,
Somewhere Between Not Knowing
(2025-11-11) Farah, Alexander; Greyson, John R.
Somewhere Between Not Knowing is a 14-minute single-channel installation that traces three life stages—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—of Hamed, a queer Afghan-Canadian man navigating curiosity, shame, and desire amid the weight of family expectation and cultural silencing. A child’s voiceover recites excerpts of David Wojnarowicz’s prophetic 1990 poem Untitled (One Day This Kid…), translated into Farsi, layered with intertitles that punctuate and fracture the semi-autobiographical vignettes. Inspired by the legacy of visual artists who have regularly appropriated antecedent work, the installation employs remix and recontextualization as artistic strategies, echoing Wojnarowicz’s text while refracting it through a diasporic, queer coming-of-age archive. The work interrogates memory, representation, and reflection, asking how a universal queer text transforms when spoken through another language, another voice, and another body.
Access status: Open Access ,
A Bunch of Times
(2025-11-11) Putnam, Tavis Johnson; Barta, Tereza
A comedic short film about intergenerational male discourse and the nuances of sexuality, A Bunch of Times centres around a recently married middle-aged man named Gord, and his ultimately inappropriate attempts to build a rapport with his new teenaged stepson, Kevin. Throughout the film, Gord becomes more and more desperate to double down on his tactic of teasing Kevin by commenting on the many attractive women, and the many sexual situations within the Game of Thrones-style TV show they are watching—which he is certain Kevin finds just as titillating as he does; whether he will admit it or not. As things become more and more uncomfortable for both Kevin and his mother, Susan, Kevin begins to turn Gord’s suggestive questions and comments back on him, culminating in a poignant catharsis wherein the two share an over-the-top, dramatic embrace befitting the medieval fantasy epic TV show they are watching.
Access status: Open Access ,
René Highway’s Dance Legacy Through a Decolonial Lens
(2025-11-11) Mumford, Cara; Greyson, John R.
This paper examines René Highway’s "Prism, Mirror, Lens" (1989) through an evolving creative process that shifted from plans for live, land-based choreography to an archival, layered, and speculative practice. Highway’s choreography troubles dominant readings of queerness not through overt representation, but through abstraction, fractured narrative, and refusal of easy interpretation. Working with degraded VHS footage, phytograms, and experimental layering, the project reframed editing as choreography, composing rhythm, dissonance, and layered perception from archival materials. Interviews with Highway’s collaborators activated memory as embodied knowledge, extending the work beyond the stage. Engaging with absence, distortion, and fragmented archives revealed that knowledge can emerge from flicker, multiplicity, and refusal of singular meaning. In this way, "Prism, Mirror, Lens" and the resulting film insist on queerness as method—holding space for speculative survival and positioning Indigenous performance as a site of both cultural continuity and futurist possibility.
Access status: Open Access ,
You May Start the Conversation Now: Two Exercises in Collaboration Towards Abolition
(2025-11-11) Li, Kristin; Greyson, John R.
You May Start the Conversation Now: Two Exercises in Collaboration Towards Abolition is a portfolio of two screen-based collaborations between Kriss Li and Amber Kim, a prisoner in Washington State. The first piece, Abolition Film Society: Flipbook Cinema is a multi-media installation composed of a two-channel silent video, five flipbooks based on the video, and a publication of conversations between Kriss and Amber. The piece emerged out of a six-month reading group. The second project, You May Start the Conversation Now, is a twenty-minute short film that documents a day of rehearsals with two actors performing science fiction dialogues co-written by Amber and Kriss through a game of exquisite corpse. This support paper will examine the obstacles, frictions, and possibilities for solidarity in artistic co-creations between people inside and outside prison, examined within the context of a broader movement to abolish prisons.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Haenyeo Project
(2025-11-11) Rodriguez Alarcon, Camilo Ernesto; Johnson, Susan C.
The Haenyeo Project is a 22-minute grounded science fiction film set in 1990’s Northern Ontario, following 16-year-old Jane, a second-generation Korean-Canadian, as she confronts identity, cultural belonging, and a mysterious family legacy. After discovering her estranged grandmother, an elderly Haenyeo diver who transforms into a sea creature, Jane wonders if she has inherited this rare ability. Blending speculative fiction with cultural history, the film reimagines the real-world Haenyeo of Jeju Island as carriers of ancestral power. The project explores how grounded sci-fi can illuminate immigrant experiences and intergenerational trauma. Developed through primary and secondary research, location shooting, and character-driven storytelling, the film reflects the filmmaker’s personal negotiation of cultural hybridity. This MFA thesis support paper documents the film’s development from concept to completion and argues that science fiction rooted in lived realities can challenge dominant narratives, reframing difference as strength and offering alternative ways to understand belonging, inheritance, and transformation.
Access status: Open Access ,
TIDES
(2025-07-23) Huras, Jessica Elizabeth; Montanari, Fabio Basso
Thesis Screenplay Title: Tides © Jessica Huras 2025, Masters in Screenwriting, Feature length dramatic screenplay adaptation of the novel Tides by Sara Freeman After a stillbirth, 39-year-old Mara leaves her life in Montreal, unable to bear the weight of her grief or the presence of her husband, Lucien, or her brother, Paul, and his wife with their newborn baby. Seeking escape, she arrives in a remote Nova Scotia seaside town, where the vast tidal swells reflect her teetering between self-annihilation and self-preservation. As the possibility of connection and the slow return of desire begin to draw her back to herself, scenes from her past unfold, revealing moments of intimacy and estrangement. Through these memories, Mara confronts her grief and begins to carve a new path forward. My research examines how grief shapes a woman’s capacity for connection, autonomy, and self-reconstruction after loss. Additionally, I explore the visual representation of grief in film and how isolation and relationality function as catalysts for redefining identity.

Browse

Recent Submissions