A special live music and cinema event featuring Newfoundland’s award-winning performer Rozalind MacPhail. DON’T LET ME FALL TOO FAR tells a timeless story of self-discovery experienced by a young woman navigating her way through a vulnerable period in her life. 

MacPhail’s live music score features moody vocals, electrifying flute loops and driving electronics reminiscent of Pink Floyd, Mazzy Star and New Order.

Raven Blue’s film HOMELESS tells a timeless story of self-discovery experienced by a young woman navigating her way through a vulnerable period in her life. Haunting, lonely, dreamy and deeply honest. The film adapts the Indigenous tradition of the vision quest and explores themes of attachment, loss and longing. Filmed in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Newfoundland’s award-winning songwriter, looping flutologist and inspirational speaker explores new ways of combining image, inspiration and sound in audio-visual works that speak honestly of people, place and the human experience. A classically trained flutist, MacPhail layers moody vocals, electrifying flute loops, omnichord and driving electronics through her effects pedals and the digital audio workstation, Ableton Live. MacPhail has received multiple honours and awards, including an East Coast Music Award for Electronic Recording of the Year and MusicNL‘s Female Artist of the Year. She has recorded 12 albums, composed music for film and toured internationally over the last two decades.

CREATIVE TEAM

Live Performance by Rozalind MacPhail 

Film by Raven Blue

CONTENT WARNINGS

Strobe Lights

Keywords: Anxiety | Depression | Family | Homelessness | Youth

#RWMFest #MoreThanRebellion

On the anniversary of their mother’s death, three sisters are hurtled back in time when their estranged father shows up with a note stating he has Alzheimer’s. Roy hasn’t seen his daughters Anita, Cece and Marie, in years and it’s a visit that is not entirely welcome. But the present Roy is quite unlike the father they remember. This Roy is affable, sensitive, funny, emotional and loving – in total contrast to the unpredictable, often drunk and abusive father of their memories. As they open to the possibility of having him in their lives they are continuously jarred by the sudden trips into the past they are forced into due to his neurological condition. Marie’s husband, Franco, a former professional musician and all-around dilettante, expounds particle theory while playing Mozart and posits the possibility that restructuring their fractured memories could alter the future from that point forward. What follows is a rapid-fire ride through past and present that illuminates the unreliable nature of memory and how the stories we hang onto define us until the moment we let them go. Inspired by King Lear, memory loss in an aging father, the cost of speaking one’s truth, the devastation addiction can wreak on a family, Ikebana flower arranging, piano prodigies and the multiverse theory known as Daughter Universes, the play explores the possibility that rewriting our memories can alter the past and ergo change the future. It is a playful, poignant and piercing look into the nature of memory.

Keywords: Addiction | Alcoholism | Depression | Family | Trauma

There will be a 15 minute Q&A with the cast following each performance.

Filmed over the course of three years, this documentary begins at the Maine Correctional Center where Jacinta, 26, and her mother Rosemary, 46, are incarcerated together, both recovering from drug addictions. As a child, Jacinta became entangled in her mother’s world of drugs and crime and has followed her in and out of the system since she was a teenager. This time, as Jacinta is released from prison, she hopes to maintain her sobriety and reconnect with her own daughter, Caylynn, 10, who lives with her paternal grandparents. Despite her desire to rebuild her life for her daughter, Jacinta continually struggles against the forces that first led to her addiction. With unparalleled access and a gripping vérité approach, director Jessica Earnshaw paints a deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma over generations.

SCREENING WITH VERY PRESENT
Conor McNally | 2020 | Canada | 5 min | English
How does prolonged confinement shape our experience of time? Filmmaker Conor McNally explores the question in the company of his brother Riley, a young man who’s learning to cope with a new—yet strangely familiar—reality.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A with Jessica Earnshaw

Keywords: Addiction | Family | Generational Trauma | Prison Industrial Complex

As a result of tireless advocacy by Autistic activists and their allies, the very meaning of Autism is shifting from a highly pathologized and misunderstood medical diagnosis to an identity that celebrates natural brain differences and embraces diverse ways of being. For the first time in this festival’s history we are
pleased to present a program of films about Autism directed entirely by Autistic individuals. These vibrant, multifaceted autobiographical narratives address the myths and stereotypes associated with Autism, illuminate the barriers Autistic individuals encounter in day-to-day life, and highlight their astounding resilience in the face of these challenges.

LISTEN (Communication First | 2021 | USA | English with described audio | 5 min) This short film was produced by a multinational, nearly 100% Autistic team in response to Sia’s controversial film Music.

THE RED HOT INSIDE (WHAT IT’S LIKE TO GROW UP WITH AUTISM)
(Jennifer Msumba | 2018 | USA | English | 4 min) Jennifer Msumba tells the story of growing up with autism and OCD and what it was like being placed in psychiatric hospitals, group homes and residential schools.

S/PACE (Estée Klar & Adam Wolfond | 2019 | Canada | English with described audio | 16 min)
A poetic exploration of autistic movement as expression, created by Adam Wolfond, a non-speaking writer/poet/artist, in collaboration with his neurodivergent artist/researcher, doctor of Critical Disability Studies, mom Estée Klar.

HOLE (Gil Goletski | 2018 | Canada | English | 6 min) HOLE is a film depicting the artist’s experiences as a transgender person on the autism spectrum.

FEARS & DREAMS (Chris Gerry | 2020 | Canada | English | 3 min) In Fears & Dreams, an Autistic man shares his anxieties and hopes about parenthood.

UNTITLED (Raya Shields | Canada | 2021 | English | 3 min) This rich multimedia narrative uses art, poetry, vocalization and movement to convey the filmmaker’s experiences of school as a child and as a university student.

GASOLINE RAINBOWS (V Vallieres | 2021 | Canada | English | 5 min) This experimental animation represents the creator’s experience of Autism, and how it is connected to their non-binary/trans gender identity, maladaptive coping strategies and mental health.

WE ARE HERE (Rowan Duncan | 2020 | Canada | English | 6 min) This poetic manifesto explores what it means to fit in or stand apart, and honours Autistic resistance and resilience.

UNSPOKEN (Emma Zurcher-Long | 2019 | USA | English with described audio | 28 min)
14-year-old Emma Zurcher-Long sees and hears the world, as she puts it, in ‘Hi-res, technicolor and surround sound’. As a chronicle of a teenager coming into her own, and as a work advocating for the rights of all peoples, UNSPOKEN is a lesson on, and celebration of, living an authentic life.

Keywords: #ActuallyAutistic | Advocacy | Autism | Non-speaking | Family

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

Join Moderator Kat Singer and a line-up Autistic creators in conversation about the ups and downs of being different, self-advocacy through art and envisioning a more inclusive future.

Please note: choice of identity first language (e.g. Autistic) over person-first language (person with Autism) reflects the preference of the majority of the Autistic community. We respect the agency of people to self identify however they wish

After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor and trans embodiment. Lyrically assembled images, decades of home movies and ethereal narration form an idiosyncratic and poetic undertow that guide a viewer through lifetimes and relationships. Like the relentless Michigan seasons, the meaning of family shifts, as Madsen Minax, his sister and his parents strive tirelessly to accept each other. Poised to incite more internal searching than provide clear statements or easy answers, North By Current dives head-first into the challenges of creating identity, the agony of growing up and the ever-fickle nuances of family.

“For me, a personal, first-person approach to storytelling was the only way to make North By Current. My own voice is the only one I feel capable of representing. This merger of personal and political storytelling became an opportunity for my family members and myself to converse, collaborate, and create together — our own version of transformative justice.” — Angelo Madsen Minax

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Q&A WITH ANGELO MADSEN MINAX
Watch a pre-recorded Q&A with the filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax about his experience creating the deeply intimate personal documentary North By Current. The discussion is moderated by Mike Hoolboom, a filmmaker and writer who lives in Toronto and director of Rendezvous 2020 opening film Judy Versus Capitalism.

Keywords: Addictions | Family | Gender | Religion | Trauma

We’re thrilled to be presenting a special 25th-ish anniversary screening of the seminal film Safe by
Todd Haynes which was presented at the third Rendezvous With Madness in 1995. This retrospective
could not be more timely given the current coronavirus pandemic we’ve all been living through since
spring 2020; nor can the serendipitous timing of Halloween; this is a quintessential horror film as seen
through the character of Carol White (played magnificently by Julianne Moore).

Set in 1987, the film follows White, a well-to-do California housewife who suddenly finds herself struggling to breathe while doctors continually insist that nothing is amiss with her health. Before long, Carol self diagnoses herself to be reacting to the toxic chemicals around her stating emphatically that she’s “allergic to the 20th century.” When Safe was originally released many viewers viewed Carol’s
plight as a metaphor for the HIV/AIDS epidemic; in 2021 it’s both that pandemic and the current one
that will leave their marks on you long after the film’s credits roll.

SCREENING WITH FORM 1
Jubal Brown | 2021 | Canada | English | 13 min
Commissioned by the non-profit organization Asylum From Psychiatry and Marta McKenzie, this
film is largely based on patient experiences in the mental health care systems in Canada. Found
footage sourced from movies and television are used to create an abstract narrative illustrating the
traumas experienced by patients in psychiatric institutions.

Keywords: Chemical Sensitivity | Environmental Illness| Family | Trauma | Virus

“I wanted to bring up the behaviour that we
all exhibit around illness, particularly in the
way we try to attach meaning and personal responsibility to illness and how much illness
and identity are mixed up with each other,
… Safe feels like this allegory about all kinds
of indeterminate and imprecise notions of
health, well-being and immunity in peril.”
—Todd Haynes