In Limbo, 2018 - Christine Yuan
October 20th - 22nd
In Limbo by Christine Yuan is a visual poem exploring the space between life and death. It is the space where the soul meets the body, before we are born, the first moment we begin to feel, incubating while the spirit merges with its physical form. It is a remembrance of the feminine divine, the birth of the soul and the source of all life. Deeply meditative, as three womxn embrace and pay respect to the earth, water, and sun through movement. Feeling every drop of water, treading the earth softly and taking in every ray of sunshine. The parallel movement in nature conjures up life, reminds us to celebrate and make an example of it. To embrace this earth with spirit and vitality.
Aurora, 2018 - Everlane Moraes
October 23rd - 25th
In Aurora, Everlane Moraes observes the existence of three Black women – from different spaces, contexts, and ages – not concerned with the narrative, but with the essence of their characters. Without a single word uttered during the 15 minute film, with the exception of a final song, we experience and feel the existential doubt that transcends age and beliefs. Each womxn continues to explore her inner conflicts and sufferings at every stage in life and reminds us that we must persist even when we feel displaced. Our belief and desire for a truly free existence keeps us curious from the moment we are birthed to our last breath and beyond. Aurora communicates this in a most subtle and tender way.
An Ecstatic Experience, 2015 - Ja'Tovia Gary
October 26th - 28th
An Ecstatic Experience is an experimental meditation on transcendence by Ja’Tovia Gary using archival material, montage editing and analogue animation techniques. Gary is concerned with challenging the notion of cinema and the role of the artist working with the scope of the medium. Her films examine the legacy of resistance and liberation through spiritual and ritualistic methods, animated by repetitive mark making carried out directly on the filmstock to represent notions of craft and gendered labor practices. Interlaced with scenes from historical events, Gary redefines the feminine gaze; focusing on the Black figure within the moving image.
Blessed Assurance, 2019 - Kilo Kish
October 29th - 31st
‘When I started interviewing the artists, I was so inspired by their willingness to suffer for a calling they found pure. Their audacity made them saintly to me. I wanted to explore belief in one’s art and the way it relates to religious faith and spiritual calling. Creative practice almost becomes a religion. And I think, through it, you become closer to God. I’m happy to explore the act of making as its very own reward. Its very own promise and certainty.’ - Kilo Kish
Originally presented as a multi room installation, Blessed Assurance: a dream that I had takes on a new life as the six individual visual pieces are framed in six individual windows. The captivating visuals mix recorded video, overlaid with punchy low-fi graphics and an animated church reminiscent of a two-bit video game - with accompanying ambient sounds, accessed through QR codes, and transport the viewer to their own physical and spiritual dimension, somewhere between the space Kish imagines and the sky above.
Eulogy, 2020 - Kya Lou
November 1st - 3rd
Eulogy splices open a three hour VHS tape passed down two generations. The tape itself consists of 8mm footage chronicling the personal lives of the filmmaker’s maternal lineage in the 1960s. Using the footage as a point of departure, Eulogy considers family structures as formative to understanding how communities are informed by care, absence, belief and joy. The presentation of this work sits between the one year anniversaries for the untimely passing of the artist’s aunt Gwendolyn (March 1948 - September 2019) and grandfather Robert Francis Baxter (November 1939 - November 2019).
I Am Arab, 2019; A Human, An Animal or A Thing, 2020; Hi, I know you missed me, 2020 - Rémie AklNovember 5th - 7th
Rémie Akl is bold and unapologetic. She says, ‘...while most of us are ashamed or afraid to say it out loud because of the foreign propagandas, I am raising my voice. I am Arab. And this video is my debut.’
Arab, an identity usually associated with being Muslim and long held as a reason for shame in the Western world, is being dismantled in these videos. Akl wants to hold men accountable for their attitudes towards womxn and reminds them that they are not needed if they want to curb our existence. In this visually captivating series of videos, Akl reclaims her Arab femme identity, talks about the sufferings of a Lebanese girl lacking a proper nation - knowing that it’s the people who build a nation - and remarks on friends from her country doing very little to encourage progress; merely accepting the situation they’re living in. These videos, Akl states, are a call for change; for a stable, conflict-free and independent Lebanon, where basic human rights and freedoms are secured for all.
A Song About Love, 2019 - Rikkí Wright
November 8th - 10th
Rikki Wright sets the tone for A Song About Love instantly, as the film opens with the words of Bell Hooks and transitions into the song Say You Love Me. In this spiritual reckoning on the different forms of love in this world, from human to divine, Wright is navigating the contrasts between real and redemptive love and the roots of enduring faith in the Black community.
She is exploring the complex relationship between sexuality and religion; the same religion that has given her and her ancestors strength, music and peace in the most difficult of times, but has not fully accepted her existence. Beautiful and moving, with striking transitions between interviews, music and Wright’s own body, this film is a reminder of the power of faith, the beauty that can come from pain and the search for oneself and our place in society.
The Prophetess, 2018 - Sylvie Weber
November 11th - 13th
In Weber’s film, The Prophetess, the narrative is twofold. The story follow two womxn, Furaha and Venantie, who - in spite of having been violated, victimized, and employed as weapons of a male conflict - use their tender friendship as the source of ultimate strength; a strength so great that it empowers their entire community of womxn to set out for a different future. In doing, so they reclaim their own narrative, ability to control their present and write their futures - devoid of societal pressures. In parallel, Weber weaves through the mythical story of Kimpa Vita—the mother of African revolution in the kingdom of the Kongo (1390–1857)—who continues to give strength to this community of womxn centuries later.
Weber says that ‘as a female director, I wanted to make a statement to global sisterhood, that legions of womxn stand beside our sisters in the DR Congo, who are being silenced systematically, who carry the weight of a nation on their shoulders.’