vol. 6, issue 2: CanCon Archives - cléo

Editor’s Note: #CanCon

kiva reardon — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:14:50 +0000

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 would become cléo journal. It would become […]

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A Complicated Dualism: An Interview with Patricia Rozema

cathleen evans — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:13:51 +0000

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 career has stood in opposition to convenient symmetry. For Rozema, discord — between […]

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Remembering Portia White

Sylvia D. Hamilton — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:12:46 +0000

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, N.S. and raised with her siblings in Halifax by her parents, Rev. […]

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P4W: Prison for Women and Hookers on Davie: The Documentaries of Holly Dale and Janis Cole

Sara Wylie — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:11:40 +0000

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 both landmark films: P4W was one of the earliest on-screen representations of incarcerated Canadian […]

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Anne Émond: Exploring Identities Through Women’s Bodies

justine smith — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:10:04 +0000

“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 my […]

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The Work of Survival in Before Tomorrow

madeleine wall — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:08:00 +0000

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 are about survival. Demonstrating how every part of life can […]

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“I think we’re alone now…: Genre Subversion in Le temps de l’avant“

Chelsea Phillips Carr — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:06:47 +0000

The idea of women alone without men is enough to generate fear. What will they talk about, what will they do, outside of the confines of social standards and the rules of powerful patriarchs? In films by men we see this frequently—often enough to create a loose semi-genre defined by Emily Yoshida as “women-alone-horrors”[i] or […]

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“Moving with the Dead” in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

taylor sanchez guzman — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:03:25 +0000

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a report detailing the abuses and deaths of around 150,000 Indigenous children in residential schools in the settler state known as Canada.[i] While the numbers allow a glimpse of the “truth” of settler colonialism, the dialogue surrounding residential schools in both Canada and the United States remains […]

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Expanding the Canon: The Cinema of Michka Saäl

kiva reardon — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:02:22 +0000

“She really was an unfortunately overlooked director.” Charlotte Selb, a colleague, wrote this in an email to me nearly a year ago. The filmmaker she was referring to was Michka Saäl, who had passed away suddenly after a quick illness in 2017. “As a woman, an immigrant and just somebody who wasn’t much of a […]

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Who We’re Watching: Joële Walinga

paloma pacheco — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 13:59:43 +0000

The question of who has the right to produce work—and to assess its worth—has left the art world to grapple with the common criticism of elitism. Historically, art galleries, cinematheques and other cultural institutions have tended to favour a narrow, academically sanctioned universe of understanding, and to outsiders they can often feel unwelcoming or inaccessible. […]

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