Suzanne Friesen

Already a successful portrait photographer, Hannah sets to reinvent this art form. Abandoning herself to a creative process that might easily be mistaken for madness, she's soon visited by mirror images of herself, as well as her daughter's ghost. Inspired by the life of photographer Hannah Maynard (1834-1918).

A woman and man in their early sixties try to cure loneliness on a second date. However, when the man eagerly convinces the apprehensive woman to sneak into an abandoned bowling alley, the discord in their personalities becomes apparent.

BARE BONES is an experimental short film written, directed and scored by DEBBY FRIDAY. Conceived during the Covid-19 lockdown and shot in Vancouver, BC on 16mm, the film tells the story of a young woman who swallows a bee and begins to undergo a hallucinatory and transformative experience. Abstract visual sequences depict time and space fracturing around her as she succumbs to wave after wave of pure feeling.

In 1999, 11-year-old Nisha Platzer lost her older brother, Josh, to suicide. Twenty years later, her search for a specialized medical treatment leads her to the door of someone who was once exceptionally close to Josh. And so it is that she finally has the chance to truly know her brother through his chosen family. Captured over five years in which synchronicities continually manifested, Platzer’s documentation of these encounters gently asserts that both grieving and healing are meant to be communal experiences.

Nine artists across the continent document their sensory experiences of lockdown, and the results broke our editing program. What emerges is an absurdist collage that playfully flips the format of a video conference on its head. Filmmakers Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis pose the question: is the human need to make sense of chaos an inherently chaotic pursuit?

In the near future, a teenage girl attends a virtual reality high school.

Memories, identity, intergenerational trauma and diaspora become merged and confused. An exploration of a meditative respite from the human condition.

A little girl spends one last day with her babysitter.

When Vancouver based pro-wrestler Judas Icarus sustains a dramatic injury, he must go through the arduous process of recovery so he can continue his practice in staged combat. This small portrait of Judas Icarus is expressed not through a continuity of events, but through the human touch, forms of light, and repeated movements which surround his recovery. Featuring a cast of active PNW based pro wrestlers and musicians, Judas Icarus Twists His Wrist is inspired by the narratives found in pro-wrestling. Where the “real-life” documentary elements and fictionalized drama begin and end may blur, but one thing is for certain - the hits are real.

An eight-legged force of fate spins a complex web of darkness and humour in Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis’s animated short.