On November 5, 2012, I sent an email to a group of women with the subject line: “A semi-formed idea.” Would people be interested in starting a film journal, one centred on feminism? This was the ask. Everyone said yes. Over the next six years, that semi-formed idea...
Patricia Rozema comes by her interest in dualism naturally. Raised in a Calvinist home in southern Ontario, religious fables — dealing in warring virtues and identities — formed the criterion of her childhood. Mindful of the efficacy of these tales, her directing...
Canadian filmmaker and writer Sylvia D. Hamilton reflects on the subject of her 2000 documentary Portia White: Think On Me. Portia White, Contralto (June 24, 1911- February 13, 1968) Portia White was a Nova Scotian classical concert performer who was born in Truro,...
Documentary filmmaking has long been celebrated as a distinctly Canadian art form, yet the works of radical women documentarians like Holly Dale and Janis Cole remain overlooked. Their feature documentaries P4W: Prison for Women (1981) and Hookers on Davie (1984) were...
“What do you see when you look in the mirror? I see the scar above my lip from chicken pox, my mother’s smile and I hear my high school friend screaming out my nickname, ‘cheekbones.’ When I look in the mirror I see my crooked teeth and my hairy arms. I strain to see...
By the light of a seal oil lamp, Ninioq (played by co-director Madeline Ivalu) begins her nightly tradition of telling tales to her grandson Maniq (Ivalu’s real life grandson, Paul-Dylan Ivalu). In the darkness, these stories are as much about passing the time as they...
