Program Details

Tuesday, April 18, 2023
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Kriss Li, François Harvey, Luisa Cruz
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Online, Images Festival, Toronto
Co-presented with Inter/Access and the Media Arts Network of Ontario

Filmmakers Kriss Li, Harvey François and Luísa Cruz present the original and, at times, unexpectedly utopian opinions of their films’ protagonists. The prison industrial complex, psychiatry, and religion are complicated by the filmmakers alongside three stories. The first is told by Cat, a woman and longtime member of the Prisoner Correspondence Project who has been released from prison. The second by Robert Dole, a gay man with schizophrenia whose sexuality, knowledge of the Christian Bible and mysticism inform his relationship to the illness. The third by Rodrigo, a young man who is expected to become a religious leader in the community he left. 

Only That Which Lingers considers what remains when someone walks away from the significant communities and practices that previously organized their lives.  First Months of Freedom, Meeting Robert Dole, and Cidade Eclética (Eclectic City) each ask: What are the lasting impacts of the power enacted by these institutions? In what ways can the impact possess a body and mind? How does it alter the way one understands themselves and the world around them? Is there a right kind of institution? 

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Program Schedule

First Months of Freedom, Kriss Li. TORONTO PREMIERE | CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 9 MIN | ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES.

A woman leaves the carceral system during the pandemic. Cat, a transgender woman in Tennessee, has been in institutions since she was four years old, and got off parole in 2022. The piece was composed from phone videos, Skype calls, archival material, and footage that a friend shot a few years before.

Rencontre avec Robert Dole, François Harvey. CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 16 MIN
FRENCH WITH ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES.

This experimental short film gives the floor to Robert Dole, who shares his story and exposes his vision of schizophrenia. The theme of mental illness echoes in a cinematographic treatment that explores the materiality of film and magnetic tapes to find points of meeting and detachment, spaces resonating with the fall and redemption of the protagonist.

Cidade Eclética (Eclectic City), Luísa Cruz. BRAZIL/CANADA | 2019 | DIGITAL | 17 MIN | PORTUGUESE WITH ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES.

When I first stumbled upon the Universal Spiritual Eclectic Fraternity, a religious community in Santo Antônio do Descoberto, Brazil, I was struck by its history and
photogeneity. Rodrigo, a young member of the Fraternity, guides me through its pink and white streets, its temples, its homes, his friends, his family. What does it mean to belong to Eclectic City?