Closing Screening: Commissioned Artists' World Premieres

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.

Andy Liu, Iris Gao, Edro Gonzales (Vancouver, BC) EMERGING
World Premiere
Duration: 5:30

An office worker in white just clocked in, waiting for the next phone call, inputting data for new models, and going about her day, until she notices the shadow she casts isn't in sync with her movements. As she realizes the shadow isn't a part of her anymore, a game between the two begins to unfold. The worker shifts her focus from the mind-numbing daily routine to the consciousness of her surroundings, before she realizes that there's another part of her in red that goes against the rules set by the shadow, which she tries to awaken.

As the worker brings out her shape in red, the shadow also constructs a shape of its own with its shadow cast as light. When the red shape is finally realized, a clash between the worker and her shadow ensues, as there's only one goal in the worker's mind: To break out of this paradoxical loop of control once and for all.

Mixing visual, sound, and storytelling elements from different eras and regions, "Shadowplay" depicts a world filled with dysfunctional work culture through an unorthodox conflict, and seeks a hidden connection between the dominance of corporatism and the illusion of self-importance.

Director, Writer, Editor, Cinematographer, Sound Mixer & VFX Artist: Andy Liu
Performers & Choreographers: Iris Gao, Edro Gonzales
Music Composer: Chris Jassmann
Sound Operator: Ayesha Cheung
Assistant Director & BTS Photographer: Normey Liu
Poster Designer: Justine Dimou

We'd like to specially thank Cineworks Vancouver and VIVO Media Arts Centre for production and workshop support, Justin Yunhan Zhao for production support, Spectra Film and Video for film stock development, Nicki Doyle from Negative Space for film stock scan, Sophia Mai Wolfe and Nancy Lee 李南屏 for artistic consultation, Joshua Lam, Sarah Wong and Sasha Langford for workshop support and F-O-R-M family for bringing this project to life.

Co-commissioned by BC Movement Arts

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.

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