FEBRUARY | WE ARE ARRIVING
Curated by Aisha Evelyna
Aisha Evelyna is passionate about bringing stories of the underrepresented to the forefront of our social consciousness. She is an actor, filmmaker, and festival programmer at Reelworld Film Festival. Recent appearances include Slo Pitch, The Influencers, and Workin’ Moms.
Aisha is developing her feature debut Seahorse, which was awarded the Indigenous Screen Office Solidarity Fund for radicalized creators.
In addition to being a 2021 Whistler Film Festival Screenwriters Lab Resident, Aisha also won the Cayle Chernin Award for Media Arts, Toronto Arts Council Media Arts Grant for short film Alex, and the IPF Production Fund for The Drop, created alongside Dani Pagliarello.
When not dreaming about film, Aisha can be found eating donuts in Toronto.
We Are Arriving.
2020 was a hot mess. Then we all had high hopes for 2021… And 2021 proved to be 2020’s annoying cousin. But, though painful and rearranging, these past two years have brought some vital change in the name of social justice.
I’d like to point this program’s audience to the events surrounding the murder of Emmett Till. In 1955, an atrocious crime was committed against a 14 year old boy. The world’s outpouring of grief and anger is widely considered to have galvanized the civil rights movement. When I consider Emmett’s story, I’m drawn to the similarities to Ahmaud Arbery’s, George Floyd’s, and to so many recent stories.
I have been left wondering, hoping… Out of all this grief, are we moving closer to the light at the end of the tunnel? To a place where murder and genocide aren’t prerequisites to action, to encouraging the marginalized to continue to take up space, to those with privilege using it to make the world a more equitable place?
For me, this selection of films embodies that hope. You will notice this collection of work created by Black Canadian filmmakers are all relatively new titles. If last year’s Where to Watch Black History Month program was about reflection, meditation, and intentions on where we hope to go, 2022’s program is evidence that we are getting there. We are arriving.
The filmmakers programmed this year are taking up the space that they deserve. Whether invited to or crashing the party, they are not going in through the side door. They are making their entrance and standing in their power.
These titles are not afraid of exploring the human condition. Leaning into the nuances. And this is what most excites me about this moment in time. Blackness and all of its facets, shining brilliantly.
-Aisha Evelyna
AKILLA’S ESCAPE
Director/Writer: Charles Officer
In a crime-noir about the urban child-soldier, Akilla Brown captures a fifteen-year-old Jamaican boy in the aftermath of an armed robbery. Over one gruelling night, Akilla confronts a cycle of generational violence he thought he escaped.
Winner of five 2021 Canadian Screen Awards including “Original Screenplay” for Charles Officer and Wendy Motion Brathwaite.
AMOURS D’OCCASION
Director/Writer: Eva Kabuya
Alors qu’une canicule étourdissante s’abat sur Montréal et plonge la ville dans une torpeur générale, les habitants du quartier de Saint-Henri sont en proie à des événements que la raison ne saurait expliquer.
As a dizzying heat wave descends on Montreal and plunges the city into a general torpor, the inhabitants of the Saint-Henri district are prey to events that reason cannot explain.
COMME LA NEIGE AU PRINTEMPS / AS SPRING COMES
Director: Marie-Ève Juste
Suffering from a strange disease that transforms her into plants, a woman inhabits her lover’s ice fishing cabin.
BLACK BODIES
Director/Writer: Kelly Fyffe-Marshall
The sequel to the viral short film Marathon, Black Bodies follows a Black man lamenting as he comes face-to-face with the realities of being Black in the 21st century.
Winner of “Best Live Action Short Drama” at the 2021 Canadian Screen Awards.
DIVINATIONS
Directors: Simon Mutabazi, Dan Boos
A young filmmaker contacts six clairvoyants, ultimately discovering a deep need to confront his family history. Blending fiction and documentary, Mutabazi and Boos find surprisingly touching results after speaking with several real psychics.
I AM GAY
Director/Writer: Ajahnis Charley
After working abroad for five years, filmmaker Ajahnis Charley returns home to Oshawa, Ontario, in the age of quarantine. In addition to reuniting with his family, he returns with a mission to share some deep personal truths. Surprising conversations ensue with his mother and three siblings creating, in this humorous and heart-wrenching story about our need to seek love and acceptance within our own families.
JOHN WARE RECLAIMED
Director/Writer: Cheryl Foggo
John Ware Reclaimed follows filmmaker Cheryl Foggo on her quest to re-examine the mythology surrounding John Ware, the Black cowboy who settled in Alberta, Canada, before the turn of the 20th century. Foggo’s research uncovers who this iconic figure might have been, and what his legacy means in terms of anti-Black racism, both past and present.
THE PORTER
Creators: Arnold Pinnock, Bruce Ramsay, Annmarie Morais, Marsha Greene, Aubrey Nealon
Showrunners: Annmarie Morais, Marsha Greene
Inspired by real events and set in the roar of the 1920s, The Porter follows the journeys of an ensemble of characters who hustle, dream, cross borders and pursue their ambitions in the fight for liberation – on and off the railways that crossed North America. It is a gripping story of empowerment and idealism that highlights the moment when railway workers from both Canada and the United States joined together to give birth to the world’s first Black union.
THE RIGHT SWIPE
Director/Writer: Omorose Osagie
After a breakup with her ex-boyfriend, a lonely romance writer joins a VR dating app to escape reality but ends up addicted to the app.
WHEN LOVE CAME TO KILL US
Director: Alicia K. Harris
A musical film inspired by Jessie Reyez album “Before Love Came to Kill Us.” Two lovers on the run try to escape an inevitable fate. Commissioned by Polaris Prize.
