before transforming we exist
Shapeshifter Media Collective (Vancouver, BC) YOUTH
World Premiere
Duration: 12:00
Content Warning: closeup of patterns/textures could trigger trypophobics
What is alive in spaces left to re-wild? “before transforming we exist” centers the cycles of ruderal species and microorganisms transmuting ruin to regeneration. This is embodied through subjects engaging in a guided plant meditation to attune with more than human kin. Dancers extend, gather and throw their grief under late stage capitalism to move towards feeling for what is growing through the cracks.
Directors: Chantal Dobles Gering & Rae Grant Duff
Soundscore: Chantal Dobles Gering
Editors: Chantal Dobles Gering & Rae Grant Duff
Cinematography: Chantal Dobles Gering, Rae Grant Duff & Reed Jackson
Dancers: Alyssa Amarshi, Roya Bahiyyih Abdi, Chantal Dobles Gering, Rae Grant Duff & Reed Jackson
Special thanks to Bijan Karim, Rafa Narciso, Nancy Lee, Joshua Lam, Sasha Langford, Sophia Mai Wolfe, Sarah Wong, Pia Massie, F-O-R-M team & Cineworks. Special thanks to Reed Jackson (Reaume Rodzinyak) for being a key collaborator during rehearsals, research calls and film production. We appreciate their attention to care and asking constructive questions that deepened the project. Special thanks to Daryl-Lee Schalm for sharing the plant meditation with Chantal.
Further Reading:
Saving Time by Jenny O'Dell
The Mushroom at the end of the world by Anna Tsing
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn
Shapeshifter would like to dedicate this film to a commitment to witnessing the land rewild, the magic of the invisible and the medicine of community growing through the cracks.
We thank the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people for protecting the sacred and their long journey co-creating with these lands, waters, the sky and spirits. We extend our hearts in a commitment to nurture, feed and be fed by deeper relations and softening towards each other.
Taha, Ua (One, Two)
Ngaire Lyden-Elleray (Vancouver, BC) YOUTH
World Premiere
Duration: 6:40
Combining poetry, dance, and film, “Taha, Ua (One, Two)” navigates the grief of displacement, the kinship of community and the resistance of reconnection. The film explores what it means to be 'home' when from an Indigenous diaspora perspective.
Director: Ngaire Lyden-Elleray
Director of Photography: Juliette Leach
Editor: Nushi Sharma
Cast: Annelie Wells, Nenaa'ikiizhikok Kinew Erdrich
Mālo to everyone involved in the creation of this project and to F-O-R-M for supporting this film. Mālo 'aupito to my kāinga and community, to whom I owe all that I am.
a drift in space
Kaya Tsrumi (Vancouver, BC) YOUTH
World Premiere
Duration: 15:48
A drift in space is a dance film about three cosmic beings and a meandering astronaut who move through inner, outer and imaginary spaces.
Director: Kaya Tsurumi
Director of Photography: Ethan Volberg
Performers: Ry Jackson, Nyah Xiyan Wong Penner, Yuha Tomita and Kaya Tsurumi
Costume: Allie Shiff
Outside Eye & Costume Assistant: Emily Clarke
Editors: Kaya Tsurumi and Ethan Volberg
Sound: Ethan Volberg
Music Composition: Ry Jackson
Make-Up: Audrey Sides
Production Assistant: Isabella Jaramillo
Crafty: John Alviz
Artistic Consultants: Sophia Wolfe and Nancy Lee
Thank you to Out Innerspace, Odd Meridian Arts, Juice Truck, and The Federal Store for your support and contributions to this project.
Co-Commissioned by plastic orchid factory and Company 605
F-O-R-M is based in so-called Vancouver, in what is colonially known as Canada, on the unceded and stolen traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. F-O-R-M continues to reflect on and bring attention to connection to bodies, land and movement through filmmaking, documentation and storytelling. We are grateful to share and witness these stories together while inspiring movement towards positive change, wherever you may be.
