Freedom and control, or chaos and systematization. With indelible nuance and care, these works defy categorization, break binaries, and tempt us to adopt a gaze of love, or resistance; defiantly, also an act of love.
This short film program includes the following films:
Freak
Claire Barnett, USA (14 min)
Confronted via home video by her partner to reveal her deepest, darkest fantasy, Laine is left questioning the limits of their relationship.
Dreams Like Paper Boats
Samuel Suffren, Haiti (19 min)
Since his wife left for the United States, Edouardo and his daughter subsist on recorded tapes she sends to fill the void of her absence with her voice. Given the distance, they cling to a future filled with love and family.
She Stays
Marinthia Gutiérrez, Mexico (10 min)
Recently accepted to a dance master’s program abroad, Laura must decide if she’s ready to walk away from Tijuana and her ex. Tonight she is watched by a coven lurking in the shadows.
We Were No Desert
Agustina Comedi, Chiachio & Giannone, Argentina (12 min)
Taking an installation by Argentine textilsts Chiachio & Giannone as a point of departure, director Agustina Comedi (Playback, MODES ‘19) stages a queered rendition of a strict national folk dance, the “Pericón.”
Grandmamauntsistercat
Zuza Banasinska, Poland (23 min)
A dazzling array of materials compiled from the educational archive in Łódź, reveals the often sexist images that were first used as a didactic means of power in Communist era Poland. The footage is repurposed to form a new portrait of the female condition through the lens of a fictional non-binary child.
Razeh-del
Maryam Tafakory, Iran/UK/Italy (28 min)
In 1998, two schoolgirls sent a letter to Iran’s first-ever women’s newspaper. While they waited to be published, they considered making an impossible film. Using citations and image intervention, Razeh-del journeys through parallel histories of war on images of women. Tafakory’s previous film (Mast-del, MODES ’23) was named among the top ten short films of the year by Film Comment magazine.
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Various
Various
2024
Various with English subtitles
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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.
My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile
Julia Loktev's follow up to last year's film about dissident journalists in Moscow tracks the reporters as they are forced into exile across a four year period, but still striving to counterbalance state propaganda as Putin pursues the war in Ukraine.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Alex Gibney's doc relates the near-lethal attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, the writer's painful rehab and recovery, and his reflections on life before, during and after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al