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XINEMA

XINEMA [zin-em-a] is an artist-run experimental film series founded and based on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). We began operation in VIFF Centre’s 41-seat Studio Theatre, with a focus on BC-based and connected media artists, stringing emerging and established artists together into monthly thematic programs.

Facilitating screenings, workshops, and related events, we prioritize underrepresented artists and media forms, and connect filmmakers and film-lovers of various backgrounds, disciplines, and career levels.

XINEMA

XINEMA & Gallery Gachet Present: Home is an Artifact

100 min

A two-part screening of experimental films by local and international artists. These reflective works flow between fragments of memory across individual and collective landscapes, forming new frameworks for reconciling identity, embodiment, and place.

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XINEMA Program 1: Times Long Past

80 min

Join us for the premiere of a new experimental film series, XINEMA. Selected works will highlight BC-based emerging & established filmmakers, and will be followed by reflective discussions between filmmakers & audience. Programs will occur every third Sunday of the month in VIFF's Studio Theatre. Program 1: Times Long Past includes works by Brittney Appleby, Sammy Chien, Richard Martin, Lindsay McIntyre, Linda Serrano, & Sydney Southam.

Curated by Celina de Leon & Sidney Gordon

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XINEMA Program 2: The Void of the Voice

120 min

Join us for XINEMA's second program of experimental film work from BC-based emerging & established filmmakers, followed by reflective discussions. 9 films that embody the dual existence of language within communication and the vastness of the voice.

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XINEMA Program 3: Absurd + Subversive

100 min

XINEMA // @xin3ma is an ongoing series that highlights BC-based experimental filmmakers. Program 3: Absurd + Subversive includes works by Sean Brennan, Deborah Edmeades, Denise Kenney, Celina de Leon, Ivan Li, Coral Short, and Michael V. Smith.

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XINEMA Program 4: The Framing of Perception

125 min

XINEMA // @xin3ma is an ongoing series that highlights BC-based experimental filmmakers.

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XINEMA Program 5: Earth as Womb

90 min

Earth as Womb invokes the existential feeling you get when you remember you're a living entity on a floating ball in space. Includes works by Khalil Alomar, Inanna Cusi, Ann Marie Fleming, MiruFiyu, Lisa G, Luciana Siebert, Evan Swain, Rafael Zen.

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XINEMA Program 6: Roleplay, Fantasy, PLEASURE!

90 min

XINEMA is thrilled to present a duo of gender-defying films — a 2002 feature-length erotic pirate adventure and a 2013 short, a tender homage to the Czech feminist filmmaker, Věra Chytilová. Join us for a night of fantasy, strap-ons, and (pirate's) booty.

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XINEMA Program 7: Grass is red and blood is green

90 min

XINEMA presents: Grass is red and blood is green, a program featuring a live-action “girl horror”, an excerpt from a 3D computer animated film, and a stop-motion experimental short.

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XINEMA Program 8: Cosmic Queerities

75 min

A seven-film exploration of the intersections between identity & fantasy. Experience the depths of queer imagination and resiliency in the face of earthly alienation – through the lens of a Lesbian Vampire, Pink Fairy, Jesus, Tom Waits and more.

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XINEMA Program 9: Phosphenia! a hypnotic film experience

55 min

Explore the chasms of the human subconscious and confront the creatures of cannibalistic psychedelia in these experimental short films by Dave Biddle, Pablo Garcia Garcia, Phoebe Parsons, and Rafael Zen.

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XINEMA Program 10: Duties in the Domestic Cinema

60 min

Five short films that explore the impact the queer and diasporic experience have on temporal and bodily manipulation. These artists return to the personalized domestic and familiar to better understand themselves and the world around them.

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XINEMA Program 11: Attack of the DIY!

70 min

A three-film spooktacular including a 3D cockroach invasion, a severed-head haunting, and a bodacious bloody threesome.

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XINEMA's One Year Cine-Celebration

120 min

Join us for XINEMA’s One Year Cine-Celebration!

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Farther Than the Eye Can See

55 min

Five short experimental films by local and international Palestinian filmmakers. These works observe Palestinian place, relation, and history and speak to personal and familial perspectives on displacement and occupation.

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notes on the colour blue / Derek Jarman’s Blue

151 min approx.

XINEMA presents notes on the colour blue, a series of international and local experimental films that recount experiences of grief, love, distance, and interiority associated or felt through blue hues. Then, Derek Jarman's Blue plays against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally -- his eyesight was failing -- and allegorically.

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