Wed Jan 22 2025 - Sat Feb 15 2025
We Would Be Freer
Canada, Palestine, 2023. Directed by Rana Nazzal Hamadeh
Through poetic imagery and an evocative soundscape, We Would Be Freer (بنكون اكتر احرار) reflects on the relationship between native plants and peoples under settler-colonialism. It explores the sumac plant—used as medicine, spice, dye, and more—highlighting varieties native to Turtle Island and the eastern Mediterranean. Through the voices of two women, one from Kahnawá:ke and the other a refugee in Ramallah, the film reflects on the role of sumac in two occupied lands, contemplating connection to land, sustainability, and wild plants.
Rana Nazzal Hamadeh is a Palestinian artist based on Anishinaabe Algonquin land. Her photography, film, and installation works explore time, space, land, and movement through a decolonial lens, using memory and story to create intimate interventions. Her practice is informed by grassroots justice movements in Palestine and Turtle Island. Rana holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University and splits her time between occupied Ramallah and Ottawa.
FUNGUS
Japan, 2022. Directed by Yoshiki Nishimura. 8 min. No Dialogue.
A playful, experimental exploration into the world of fungi, capturing the growth of four mushroom varieties over a week. Through photogrammetry and 3D modeling, the filmmaker presents these transformations in a surreal, alien-like space, revealing deeper perceptions of realities often hidden from everyday view.
Yoshiki Nishimura is a Japanese experimental film maker working with 3D computer graphics. He is making his works on the boundary between real and virtual worlds, expanding our views of reality into various directions in cyberspace. Currently, he teaches at the Dept. of Film and Media Arts, Tohoku University of Art and Design, Yamagata, Japan.
Khobs & Chai
Canada, Iraq, 2022. Directed by Noor Gatih. 4:16 min. Arabic
(with subtitles in English)
Khobs & Chai is an intimate conversation revisiting the filmmaker’s childhood memories of baking with her grandmother, reflecting on the wisdom and resilience shaped by a life marked by war. Through the tactile process of bread-making and the symbolism of tea, shared experience is conveyed, while the stop-motion animation technique mirrors the exploration of memory and the timeless lessons passed down across generations.
Noor Gatih is an Iraqi-Canadian photographer and filmmaker from Toronto, whose work explores themes of gender, memory, queerness, language, and history, often through the lens of family archives and photography. Her projects bridge personal narratives with broader cultural contexts, experimenting with analog processes including super 8mm film, and visual storytelling creating spaces for reflection on how we relate to each other and ourselves.