CANADIAN SHORTS

SHORTS PROGRAM

SCREENING IN-PERSON + ONLINE

IN-PERSON SCREENING:
JUNE 12, 2022 • 1 PM
@ LIGHT HOUSE ARTS CENTRE
(1800 ARGYLE STREET, HALIFAX)

VIEWABLE ONLINE IN ATLANTIC CANADA
FOR 48 HOURS FOLLOWING IN-PERSON SCREENING

Our Canadian Shorts program brings together a stunning array of films that meditate on the surreal nature of reality, or rather, navigate the collision of multiple ways of seeing. Set now, or perhaps, whenever, this year’s lineup invites us to meet the myths that underpin our cultural and political bodies and interactions—and those that hang heavy over ourselves. 

Alexa-Jeanne Dubé’s Joutel challenges the frame with its bifurcated gaze to meet and make peace with the outer limits of nostalgia for pasts lived and futures lost, as we follow an elderly couple return to their old home to bury a dead raccoon. 

Miryam Charles’ Song for the New World is a oneiric wash of images that fade and dance with one another to rearticulate, as the daughter of a disappeared man recalling words chanted before nightfall.

Both cheeky examinations of gender, embodiment, and performance, Marie Valade’s rotoscope animation Boobs and Maziyar Khatam’s one-shot Bump playfully consider the ways in which our conceptions of self are met and are challenged by the external world through the respective lens of feminine and masculine identities.

Jorge Camarotti’s Ousmane conveys the sorrow of separation through the story of a Burkinabé immigrant who is reluctantly drawn into a neighbour’s troubles in his Montreal apartment building.

Mike Maryniuk’s June Night juxtaposes handcrafted animation with archival footage into a shimmering post-mordial composition of life after COVID, a world materially consistent with our own but utterly cut up, rearranged, and preoccupied with the spectre of Buster Keaton.

Jennie Williams’ Nalujuk Night documents the Labrador Inuit tradition of Nalujuit, the annual visit of creatures as familiar as they are strange, which offer the community and its members the opportunity to demonstrate and solidify their identity.

Albert Shin’s Together confronts the boundaries that define and isolate the self, as we follow anonymous strangers who convene at a seaside motel with very particular and somewhat paradoxical intentions.

We are truly excited to showcase this fantastic collection of Canadian filmmaking at HIFF 2022. —CDF

Canadian Shorts lineup:

Joutel • Alexa-Jeanne Dubé

Song for the New World •Miryam Charles

Boobs • Marie Valade

Bump • Maziyar Khatam

Ousmane • Jorge Camarotti

June Night • Mike Maryniuk

Nalujuk Night • Jennie Williams

Together • Albert Shin