Remembering the Children: The Red Deer Indian Industrial School by Penny Gullion
For over 100 years, many of the Indigenous children of Canada were forcefully taken from their families and sent hundred or thousands of kilometers away to Residential Schools whose purpose was to take away their language and culture and replace it with that of the European colonizers, often using abuse and neglect to achieve this goal.
The Red Deer Indian Industrial School which operated from 1889 to 1919 and was per population one of the most deadly Indigenous Residential Schools in Canada’s history. This film focuses on honouring the memory of the students who survived as well as those that died at the school whose bodies where never returned to their families. It also focuses on how this has affected generations of First Nations, Inuit and Metis through intergenerational trauma, but also how to move towards a brighter future of cultural revitalization and reconciliation through the eyes of the Indigenous filmmakers on their journey of discovery. (1hr 04mins)
Director: Penny Gullion
"The Effects" - Mike Berry
(19mins, Feature Narrative, United States)
Rosa, a teen, is forced to make a difficult decision when her father, Hector, a hard working Guatemalan is threatened with deportation
"BE YOUR FEMININE" - Benny Berry-Wolfenden
(6mins, Documentary, Canada)
Four people sit down and discuss how femininity either helped or hindered their self-expression. Everyone grows up with a view on femininity, and as you grow older that view grows with you, and that can either be explored and submerged through the ones around you!
"Tacchi (Heels)" - Davide Orfeo
(14mins, Short Film, Italy)
How far can a granddaughter's love for a grandmother go?
"Tacchi" tells the story of an uncertain but unrelenting everyday life, of silent suffering enclosed in a house, of quiet and deep devotion, of a girl who decides to wear her own red heels and prostitute herself in order to care for her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
"Moon Shadows" - Hart Ginsburg
(3m, Music Video, United States
An image of a child looking towards the evening moon visited my thoughts one day or maybe it was a dream, from there an imaginary dialogue or dance emerged between the moon and the child. But who is guiding who in this planetary dance, is it the moon or the child?
"Yellow Line" - Katayoun Parmar
(13mins, Short Film, Iran)
A girl who`s trying to be a dancer but there are problems that she has to face in her path...
"The Last Child" - Serna Amini
(9mins, Short Film, Iran)
A woman along with her husband is arrested for drug trafficking and spent years in prison. She tries to survive until one day the social worker comes to visit her and gives her the bad news.
"One Date" - Andrew 'King Bach' Bachelor
(6mins, Short Film, United States)
One date can lead to love or disaster.
"Contact Man" - Andrew 'King Bach' Bachelor
(6mins, Short Film, United States)
A superhero or a weapon, his purpose his unknown.
"I WANT TO FİSH--BALIK TUTMAK İSTİYORUM."
- MELİHAT ÖZDOĞAN AĞGÜL
(5mins, Short Film, Turkey)
Seferihisar Municipality's women's solidarity center and laundry officer is Mrs. Seval. It is the story of the positive change in the lives of four women with her education and studies. While the children of the disadvantaged women were taken care of in fairy tale houses, the women were provided to work and to be involved in social life. Four women aged twenty-eight shared their experiences to set an example for others.
"In the Wake of the Cedar Tree" - Towustasin
(24mins, Documentary, Canada)
Past traumas of Haida Gwaii, economic, cultural & environmental depression explored by Haida poet & videographer Towustasin.
"You People" - Zamani Folade
(Canada, 7mins, Music Vido)
Zamani's composition and production of a tribute to Viola Desmond.
"Behind the Loom" - Heejom Kim
(11mins, Documentary, United States)
An experimental animated short film about the impact of war on women underscoring rape as a war crime in 1945. Told from the perspective of one family, this common yet forgotten story surrounding the Siege of Berlin.
"The Rainbow Bridge" -Brett Morreau
(7mins, Short Film, Canada)
A young girl's cat passes away and awakes in a utopian afterlife. It finds comfort and companionship with other pets as it keeps tabs on the girl as she continues on with her life before being reunited in the end.
"Txotxongiloa" - Sonia Estévez
(10mins, Animation, Spain)
A female puppet appears locked in a room, prostrate on the floor and immobile. After several experiences, ropes are attached to her body and her movements begin to be more and more fluid. Each of the strings is associated with a scene related to an aspect of women's social problems, such as the body, equality or gender.
"Safely Feel the Real World" - Jodi Xiong
(3mins, Animation, China)
“Safety feel the real world” Durex 001 collaborated with Volvo XC40 to co-release a short film. Colored in signature Durex 001 colors (black and gold), the animation follows a couple who wakeup from a VR simulated dream and escape to a safe reality on “001 Island.” In the visual narrative between the two brands, safety is a sexy and apparent benefit, one that allows us to approach intimacy and embrace reality.
"Filter" - Qianhang Shao
(11mins, Short Film, China)
Xiaomei is a heavy user of the beautyCam/filter and cannot extricate herself from the world dressed by the BeautyCam/filter. However, the unexpected visit of her mother forces her to face reality. But what is the reality? Who are we without the filter? What is our real appearance? The anxiety and confusion of contemporary young people fermented in the digital space. Will it quietly reform who we are in real life?
"The Chase" - Gurjeet Kaur Bassi
(11mins, Short Film, Canada)
Frustrated with their current circumstances, a young couple faces the difficult choice of either seeking justice or helping those who wronged them.
"The Unknown Caller" - Funmi Adetola
(11mins, Short Film, Canada)
Keon is a bright young black man whose anger has slowly grown due to microaggressions from seemingly everyone and is given a dangerous offer from an unknown caller.
"Luanarcode: The Light" - Vincenzo Carubia
Music Video
Latest music video by award winning Rock Band LUNARCODE. this is off their first album "Stories Untold" available on iTunes, Spotify and all major platforms
"Feeling the Apocalypse" - Chen Sing Yap
(7mins, Animation, Canada)
A psychotherapist struggling with climate anxiety explores what it means to live in a dying world.
"Dancing with the Unknown" - Iasi Ensemble
(Music Video - 4mins)
The Esraj and Sitar, two ancient instruments of Indian Classical Music, stir with cosmic vibrations in film "Dancing with the Unknown", activating and balancing both the material and transcendental worlds. Through the therapeutic power of music, they travel across space-time, drawing the necessary quantum energy vibrations to harmonize opposing forces and tendencies of being.
A marionette, symbolic of a divine or human presence traveling through history, now emerges in modern life as a totem, arousing dormant human nature through the art of dance. This ancient art, inherent in human nature, involves a dialogue between masculine and feminine stages, exploring recognition, opposition, reconciliation, and ultimately, a transformative union. Passing through the polarization of desire and competition, the two beings are led to a blessed state of complete unity, absolute love, and mastery of the art of Sitar and Esraj.
Having fulfilled its purpose as a symbol of awakening, the totem departs from space-time, leaving its memory in the sculpted forms of dolls that observe the course of human beings as creations of itself, imprints and reference points of the periods of its culture. The Baroque-ethnic scenery portrays man's alienation from nature through symbolic imagery, while the sculptural forms of dolls preserve the memory of lost innocence, embodied by the clown as a symbol of the global stage
Time Out
by Stephanie Mahome
“Time Out” focuses on the mental health of a young Black teen boy struggling with the pressures of expectations of his father's expectations but finds a new way to understand his own self-identity.
