Program Details
Sunday, April 23, 2023
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Zandashé Brown, Alger Liang, Xenia Matthews, Udval Altangerel, Karan Talwar, and Chanelle Lajoie
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Images Festival, Toronto
In the introduction to her book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Katherine McKittrick describes the work of writer and poet Dionne Brand as “demonstrating that geography, the material world, is infused with sensations and distinct ways of knowing: rooms full of weeping, exhausted countries, a house that is only as safe as flesh.”
This program considers the distinct ways of knowing a place, and one’s place in it, that are inherited from or taught through mothering. When I speak of mothering here, I am invoking the words of Cynthia Dewi Oka who looks at mothering not as a biological function but as a social practice available to the spectrum of gendered bodies and their many relations. She writes:
Mothering as a revolutionary praxis involves exploring how we might reorganize ourselves to meet common needs in this historical moment, including the capacity to nurture whole, resilient individuals as well as autonomous communities of resistance. [1]
From the work of these three writers, questions begin to swirl: What might a matrilineage based on Cynthia’s definition of mothering look like? What ways of knowing might be revealed when thinking about matrilineages as geographic practice? When the mother is a place one can return to, what sensations might be speakable, maintained, inherited? And what happens when one cannot return to the place of mother, either as a child or as a mother themselves?
Filmmakers Zandashé Brown, Alger Liang, Xenia Matthews, Udval Altangerel, Karan Talwar and Chanelle Lajoie present a series of motherhoods that traverse spatial-temporal labyrinths and generously hold space for this line of questioning.
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016).
Program Schedule
Benediction
Zandashé Brown
WORLD PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 20 MIN ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES
Benediction explores the importance of being able to hold and acknowledge the sorrow that lives inside of us. And the beauty and terror that comes with emotional release. This story serves as a reminder that healing asks that we be bold enough to dive into the depths of ourselves.
motherland 母懷之地
Alger Ji-Liang
TORONTO PREMIERE | CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 13 MIN | ENGLISH AND CANTONESE WITH SUBTITLES
motherland 母懷之地 is an experimental film that follows a grieving boy who moves across the liminal spaces of his memory to remember someone he’s lost. Through this act, he must confront the tension and trauma within his body to find solace.
OURIKA!
Xenia Matthews
CANADIAN PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 19 MIN | ENGLISH, FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
The long-dead Ourika, a Senegalese girl enslaved by a French aristocrat, is awoken in the eerie space between life and death, between body and soul, where she finds her way back to life and into liberation.
The Wind Carries Us Home
Udval Altangerel
CANADIAN PREMIERE | MONGOLIA/USA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 11 MIN | MONGOLIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Through rituals of birth and death, the filmmaker and her family reconnect with their ancestral land in the Gobi Desert.
Sarson ka Saag (Mustard Greens)
Karan Suri Talwar
CANADIAN PREMIERE | INDIA | 2022 | 16 MM > DIGITAL | 9 MIN | HINDI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A mother guides her son through making a popular Punjabi delicacy called Sarson ka Saag. He imitates his mother’s movements, attempting to inherit broken pieces of a partitioned culture. Shot on black and white 16mm, the film uses mustard and spices in its developing process, forming a gastronomical archive.
Grand Mother Tongue
Chanelle Lajoie
TORONTO PREMIERE | CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 3 MIN | ENGLISH AND CREE WITH SUBTITLES
Grand Mother Tongue pairs poetry, spoken in Plains Cree, and breath with the intimate imagery of strawberries being consumed bite by bite, finger lick by finger lick. These stories work to build a foundation of queer desire, heart medicine, and language revitalization.
Jaclyn Quaresma 