Sunday September 7, 5pm
ODD Box, 2 Daly Ave. (2nd floor)
Pay-what-you-can
Suggested admission $10
Explore innovative approaches to the art of filmmaking in this program of short experimental works. Co-presented by Digital Arts Resource Centre.
PARANGOLÉ
Abinadi Meza, Mexico / USA, 2023, 3 min.
Ontario festival premiere
A parangolé is a cape or cloak activated by the body in a personal performance, individually or in a group; it is made from common and found materials such as plastic, paper, cloth — anything at hand or found. Here, a film is a parangolé — a membrane, a memory veil, enclosing the body and the environment. The environment is a rainy morning in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; you can hear the morning, and the body inside the morning.
KAUAʻI ʻŌʻŌ
Samy Benammar, Canada, 2023, 4 min.
Ontario festival premiere
In 1987, the song of the kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a bird endemic to Hawaii, is recorded for the last time. Its song serves as the starting point for a visual exploration of the landscape and the winged creatures inhabiting it. Mostly shot on location, the film is a visual poem caught between the chaos of disappearance and the calm of an aerial melody that takes us on a journey through seasons and territories.
RAIN
Mike Hoolboom, Canada, 2024, 5.5 min.
Canadian festival premiere
How to step into a new kind of Jerusalem without becoming what we feared? How to leave behind every notion of the chosen few, and embrace the ones along the way, finding a promised land in each other? Based on an excerpt from the poem “Red Sea: April 2002” by Aurora Levins Morales, a disabled Puerto Rican Jewish writer and activist.
RIVER GHOSTS
Jonathan Johnson, Thailand / USA, 2018, 4.5 min.
Canadian festival premiere
In this experimental documentary, an unseen filmmaker uses unseen memories to follow traces of his deceased grandparents throughout urban and rural Thailand. Loosely following a travelogue-essay format, the search for identity is intertwined with the old and new history of rural and urban Thailand.
HALF LIFE
Laura Iancu, Romania, 2023, 4 min.
Ontario festival premiere
Different worlds at different time scales.
TRACE ON MY BODY
Yue Hua, USA / China, 2023, 3.5 min.
Canadian festival premiere
A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice — everything belongs to my body.
ADVENTURES IN PERCEPTION
Dave Johnson, Canada, 2023, 2.5 min.
Ottawa festival premiere
This film is a collision of images combining a visual and auditory adventure while talking about being an artist and the process of making this film… or any film! As a filmmaker you are going through various adventures trying to assemble a unique and intriguing combination of visual and auditory stimulation. Sometimes the process of creating the film becomes flawed and your original intent inevitably becomes something new. In the end, does the film become a success or “the dream I tried for that couldn’t be realized”?
PASSAGE
Pixie Cram, Canada, 2023, 5 min.
World festival premiere
I began filming my daughter in the summer of 2020 when she was 15 months old. Most of the stock was short-ends from previous projects, hand-processed. I filmed her toys and the changing seasons. It was my way of marking the passage of time. As she grew, she developed the desire to be the one behind the camera and began to participate in the filming.
SOJOURN
Stacey Sproule, Canada, 2025, 3.5 min.
Ottawa festival premiere
Centred on the South Shore of Ontario’s Prince Edward County, a place of significant biodiversity as well as a high density flight path for migratory songbirds, Prince Edward County is also a popular tourist destination. This work was a meditation on access to nature, land, and temporary stays. The work is a way to grapple with rapid development, loss of public access to nature and the ongoing destruction of habitat both in Prince Edward County and across the province.
I WALK WHILE GLACIERS MELT
Lucia Lambarri Barberis, Peru / UK, 2024, 9 min.
Canadian festival premiere
This visual essay combines animation and live-action footage to guide the audience through the Andean mountains and snowy peaks of Cusco, Peru. The film reflects on the director’s walking as a means to embrace life’s fragility and constant transformation. It revisits Andean relational animism, rituals, miniatures, and pilgrimage to question modernity and our place in an era of melting glaciers, while celebrating the shared journey with others.
MEGA FOUNDRY
Yixin Zhang, China / USA, 2024, 10 min.
Canadian festival premiere
MEGA FOUNDRY critically examines humanity’s obsession with material progress, exposing the contradictions behind technological advancements. Far from tools, the objects we create shape our reality, dictating our thoughts and values. Innovation is often a cycle of consumption, where humans, enslaved by their own creations, lose themselves in a world of excess.