Processing Duration is an anthology of recent short films by Workman Arts member artists that contemplate subjects of service, restriction, healing and embodied time. Through movement, ritual,
montage and song, these short films highlight nuance and storytelling. Ice On The Window Like A
Thousand Small Bees, Troubled Amplitude and Ice Into Fire experiment with urban and natural environments as a way to work through layered feelings. Looking inwards, the films Therapy Fragments Body Language, Fuck, Romberg’s Sign and The Space Without use self-documentation to explore vulnerability, growth, and resilience. While, the films Disability Video, The Beats, and Melody prove
the power of nature, music and narrative.

BODY LANGUAGE (Tara Clews | 2019 | 2 min)

DISABILITY VIDEO (Sirene Koser Qureshi | 2021 | 2 min)

FUCK (Emily Schooley | 2021 | 3 min)

ICE INTO FIRE (Anja Sagan | 2020 | 12 min)

ICE ON THE WINDOW LIKE A THOUSAND SMALL BEES (Catherine Jones | 2020 | 3 min)

MELODY (John Perera | 2021 | 3 min)

ROMBERG’S SIGN (Laura Shintani | 2021 | 2 min)

THE BEAST (Amy Ness | 2021 | 10 min)

THERAPY FRAGMENTS (Blanca Lopez | 2021 | 13 min)

THE SPACE WITHOUT (Emily Sweet | 2019 | 3 min)

TROUBLED AMPLITUDE (Jan Swinburne | 2018 | 9 min)

Keywords: Artists | Experimentation | Healing | Music | Resilience

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:
FILMMAKERS Q&A
Join the filmmakers for an in-person and virtual Q&A ; moderated by filmmaker James Buffin

We are excited to co-present the program “what is erased occasionally returns as a ghost” at the 2021 Images Festival. This year, Images Festival is FREE online via live-stream at imagesfestival.com from May 20-26, 2021.

“what is erased occasionally returns as a ghost” features works by Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, Ruth Höflich, Vika Kirchenbauer, Kamila Kuc, and Laida Lertxundi. The program will screen on Sunday, May 23 at 8:00 PM EDT with a Q & A to follow with the artists moderated by Bojana Stancic. Co-presented with 8fest, Canadian Film Institute, and Workman Arts/Rendezvous With Madness.

Film is a storytelling format that can splice directly into a person’s awareness of something. Yet in hindsight, when has the medium showcased the sensitive and nuanced topics of mental health and/or addiction?

Hindsight is a short film retrospective that traverses the topic of mental health and addiction within the National Film Board’s extensive archive. This co-presented program looks back almost seventy years to dynamically highlight a spectrum of stories and filmmaking techniques. Films sampled from the archive include Breakdown (1951), a fictitious film about a seemingly well-adjusted young woman who’s schizophrenic episode has landed her in a modern mental hospital. The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan (1978), a portrait documentary depicting the life of Jimmy Quinlan, one of an estimated 5000men who struggled with addiction in the alleys of late 1970s Montreal. Street Kids (1985), a succession of montaged black and white photographs voiced over to reveal a glance into juvenile prostitution. Nowhere Land (2015), a documentary narrated by Inuit Bonnie Ammaaq and her family tells their faint memories of attempting to live while the government-manufactured community of Igloolik becomes an elegy for Indigenous displacement and mental health. XO RAD MAGIQUE (2019) is an animated video work both psychedelic and hypnotic in nature, that takes you on an abstract journey living with schizophrenia in daily life.

Accompanying this NFB retrospective is a pre-recorded video interview with local Toronto artists Katelyn Gallucci, Greg Mccarthy and Derek Coulombe. In conversation, the artists will discuss the activity of looking back. How do the films bring up feelings of hindsight? How do we navigate these feelings? Why do we as artists sample from archives? Why is it important to create discussions around archival material?

For the fourth consecutive year, If You Ask Me (IYAM) has supported emerging filmmakers with mental health and/or addiction experiences to create new work. This year’s program features eight shorts by filmmakers across Canada: Malaika Athar, Hanna Donato, Manvinder Gill, Kitoko Kasiama, Jae Lew, Claudia Liz, Samyuktha Movva and Shubhi Sahni.

These new films were developed in summer 2020 under the guidance of Gillian Muller and IYAM alumni and mentors Saba Akhtar, Erum Khan and James Knott. Over three months, filmmakers deepened their knowledge of film in the company of peers and industry guests. Rendezvous is excited to screen these distinctly personal works created during an unprecedented time.

Rendezvous would like to thank the following workshop guests: Linsey Stewart, Dane Clark, Kelly Fyffe Marshall, Carine Zahner, Ashley Iris Gill, Marcus Armstrong and Gagan Singh.

This program was made in partnership with BIPOC TV and Film and Trinity Square Video.

Plus a special screening of youth film competition winner from 2020 Singapore Mental Health Film Festival: 

When Mirrors Had Meaning
Yuga J. Vardhan | 2020 | Singapore | Hindi and English with English subtitles | 10 minutes

When Mirrors Had Meaning presents the searing experience of 70-year-old Krishnan, as he sets off on a journey in search of a distant memory, leaving behind a letter to his family. 

Courtesy Singapore Mental Health Film Festival (smhff.com)

The world changed dramatically between the initial planning of IYAM 2020 and now. This year’s cohort of filmmakers pivoted their practices to adapt to ever-changing conditions. Join the Q + A session to learn how recent events informed the production of their films and hear their predictions on how this time will shape the future of film.

Women-identified people’s relationship with madness has always been distinct; from the archetypal ‘madwoman in the attic,’ to individual experiences of womxn consumers / survivors / ex-inmates, to the ‘mad’ cultural expectations of femininity in everyday life. Throughout Western history women have been viewed as irrational, their bodies designated as aberrant and posited as the cause of mental disturbances, e.g. hysteria. At the intersections of racialization and transphobia, the confluence of mental illness and femme becomes even more fraught and perilous.

Panic Attack and Regarding the Pain of Others ask questions about how patriarchal capitalism’s expectations of womxn erode their sanity, and how humour and empathy may offer complex ways to subvert them. Originally screened in a gallery context with the viewer atop an exercise bike, Graft and Ash delves deeper into the ways in which productivity culture and white supremacy enact subtle and explicit violence upon Black femme bodies and psyches. I Want to Kill Myself and Better for Me are personal accounts of the deep pain of living through depression and psychosis respectively; gender identity, family and the power of music are threads and lifelines running through them. Trouble is a second-person portrayal whereby the artist’s mother tersely recounts her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and her gratitude for the ability to manage it. Where There is Room to Bloom uses self-love, ancestral knowledge and Black spiritualism to move through multigenerational trauma, and to imagine a new world full of beauty and the psychological space necessary to thrive.

Panic Attack
Eileen O’Meara | 2018 | USA | English | 3 minutes

Watching the Pain of Others
Chloé Galibert-Laîné | 2019 | France | French and English with English subtitles | 31 minutes

Trouble
Camille Pueyo | 2020 | France | French with English subtitles | 3 minutes

Better for Me
Alexandra Douglas | 2020 | Canada | English | 11 minutes

I Want to Kill Myself
Vivek Shraya | 2017 | Canada | English | 9 minutes

Where There is Room to Bloom 
Kelisha Daley | 2020 | Canada | English | 7 minutes 

Following the screening of Madwomxn, join Kelisha Daley, Alexandra Douglas, Chloé Galibert-Laîné, Eileen O’Meara and Camille Pueyo to discuss their short films.

Avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, once famously remarked: “Cameras do not make films; filmmakers make films.”

Featuring Workman Arts Members: Gerald Mackenzie, Brian Demoskoff, Genova, Emily Sweet, Jaene Castrillon and a special quarantine omnibus from the 2020 film class; this imaginative and exciting shorts program showcases the endless bounds of filmmaking as a creative outlet. Together through their willingness to creatively explore their surroundings and even document their daily-lives during a global pandemic, these film-makers prove that the most critical equipment for filmmaking is yourself, your imaginative mind, and your freedom to use both.

Programme
A Lasting Impact, by Emily Sweet, 5 minutes
All This Time, by Genova, 10 minutes
Blood Downer, by Gerald Mackenzie, 10 minutes
Naomi Hendrickje Laufer’s Dormant filmed by Brian Demoskoff, 3 minutes
Respect, by Jaene Castrillon, 45 minutes
Quarantine Blues, by Susan Lieberman, Gerald Mackenzie, Amy Ness, Omar Samara, Emily Sweet and Lucy Drumonde, 21 minutes

Support for this streaming program provided by Toronto Arts Council’s Open Door Program with special thanks to VUCAVU.

Join the filmmakers for a virtual Q&A on Friday, Oct 16, at 4:00 pm.

Get Mad: IYAM shorts

For the third consecutive year, If You Ask Me (IYAM) has supported emerging filmmakers with mental health and/or addiction experiences to create new work. This constantly evolving program has grown to follow the needs of the filmmakers and RWM is very excited to be showing four new short films in 2019 by Saba Akhtar, Julianne Ess, Erum Khan and James Knott.

These filmmakers have worked under the guidance of mentor Fallon Andy and have been working at Trinity Square Video over the summer months to develop new short films. Each year these artists have been commissioned to create longer works to be shared in the festival and next year they will graduate into becoming mentors for a new generation of filmmakers looking to share their mental health stories through film.

This program is also being offered in conjunction with a Paprika Theatre Festival writing workshop.

For info and sign up, visit here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/paprika-workshop-bringing-your-authentic-self-to-your-writing-tickets-73823105897

1-on-1 advice for Young Filmmakers & Professionals 

The IYAM participants are emerging arts leaders who are interested in giving back to their communities. Join the artists as they engage in intimate conversations along with representatives from professional film making and theatre organizations as they offer advice, talk through ideas, give feedback and, most importantly, meet other young creators who are looking to share their stories!

With support from CAMH’s Youth Engagement Initiative and the National Youth Action Council