As time moves ever the more forward, histories are revisited. Some continue to be honoured while others are called for a reckoning.
September 29 & October 1: Q&A with the film teams
This short film program includes the following films:
Our Grandmother the Inlet
Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos, Kayah George, BC (9 min)
Kayah George, a young Tsleil-Waututh woman and her grandmother Ta7a, daughter of the late Chief Dan George, reflect on their relationship to water, culture, and land.
Unspeakable Heap
Kara Ditte Hansen (14 min)
An accumulation of histories is explored via the filmmaker’s uncle, a retired Grego-Roman Olympian wrestler who lives in a sinking house built atop a decommissioned landfill.
Master of the House
Dylan Maranda, BC (17 min)
A young sommelier struggles to balance friendship and ambition on the night an acclaimed restaurant critic dines at his work — Reclamation, a restaurant hyped on reinventing Indigenous cuisine.
The Company We Keep
Wojtek Jakubiec, QC (6 min)
An intimate portrait of a ceramics artist and her dog.
Modern Goose
Karsten Wall, MB (20 min)
The adaptive behaviours of the Canadian geese are examined as city co-habitants affected by human intervention and climate change.
Outside Center
Eli Jean Tahchi, QC (21 min)
Finding community via his gay rugby league, Jamaican-born Desmond navigates life, love, and identity as an immigrant living in Munich, Germany.
Death Mask
John Greyson, ON (10 min)
This experimental opera reenacts the lesser known history of Chinese medical student Li Shiu Tong, and his lover Magnus Hirschfeld, a much older German sexologist and gay rights pioneer during Nazi Germany.
All the Days of May
Miryam Charles, QC (7 min)
Following the production of a documentary on the death of her daughter, a mother reflects on life, grief, and time.
Mothers and Monsters
Edith Jorisch, QC (16 min)
In this surrealist satire, a celebratory banquet hosted for and by new mothers is disrupted by a series of strange disturbances.
Supported by
Community Partner
Various
Canada
2023
VIFF Short Forum
Various with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
The Mad Dog of Europe
The story of an unmade screenplay from the writer of Citizen Kane. In 1932, Herman Mankiewicz wrote a film that foretold the persecution of the Jews and the war in Europe. But Hollywood wouldn't take the risk and The Mad Dog of Europe was never made.
The Mortal Storm
In this explicitly anti-Nazi melodrama directed by Frank Borzage (Three Comrades) a year before the US entered the war, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart fall in love as their friends and family fall prey to the rise of Hitler's Nazi party in Germany.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
Three Comrades
Scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald, Three Comrades (1938) was the first US studio film to chronicle the rise of European fascism in the 30s. Three German veterans open up a repair shop and try to regain a normal life, but political extremists have other ideas.