Fans of alternative short films are in for a treat from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday (May 24) at The Commons @ 401 (401 Richmond Street West). As part of Doors Open, FADO, imagineNATIVE, Reel Asian, SAVAC, and Vtape will present a 30-minute rotation of films curated by Kelly Lui and Kaitlynn Tomaselli. The free program, SERIOUS BIZ, will be screened in the Bachir-Yerex Presentation Space.
DaynaAI, an AI doppelgänger for queer media artist Dayna McLeod, will introduce the program. This will be followed by “DaynaAI: This is not Dayna McLeod’s gibber”, which McLeod directed.
SERIOUS BIZ also includes “a tangled web drowning in honey”. It’s co-directed by Hannah Hull, a.k.a. artist and musician Burning Salt, and Tara Hakim, who is of Palestinian heritage and who was raised in Jordan.
“The ancient practice of ‘burning salt’ is an act of expulsion, purification or protection,” the program guide states. “Hull uses song, poetry, drawing, animation and film to these ends.”
Next up is Noor Gainth’s “POP”, which “documents two sisters, Marium and Laila Vahed, as they spend a seemingly ordinary day trying to pass the time”.
Meanwhile, Nbisiing Anishnaabe/Irish, Nipissing First Nation filmmaker Evelyn Pakinewatik’s “Mooz Miikan” focuses on an aging hunter accompanied by his youngest child in search of a moose.
In addition, there is a video on dancing with disability in SERIOUS BIZ. Alice Sheppard and Danielle Peers’s “Inclinations” makes use of a 90-foot ramp at the University of Alberta as a source of creative movement.
“Dancers can move in ways that they cannot move on flat surfaces and the ramp itself becomes an artistic object, transformed albeit temporarily into an environment that reveals connection, trust, beauty, and desire,” the program notes reveal.
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