FILM

Displaced Labour: Shorts Program

These films explore the ways that migration and forced displacement, on a global and local scale, shape our relationships to work and the communities that sustain us.

Sunday May 15th, 3PM-5PM (Doors open 2:30PM) at Innis Town Hall.

Registration required, RSVP here.

A Horse Has More Blood Than a Human by Abolfazi Talooni, Iran and UK

An older couple leave Tehran and return to their idyllic home town on the Turkish border, but their dreams of quiet retirement are shattered by the realization that their town has become a smuggling gateway into Europe.

Riders Not Heroes by Davide Rapp and Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Italy

Riders Not Heroes is a short video essay that investigates the precarious conditions of food delivery riders in Milan. The film makes a strong case for riders as essential workers, lying at the intersection of platform capitalism, gig-labor, the refugee crises and COVID-19.

X by Mareike Wegener, Germany

A reimagination of the demonic crossroad myth, X takes place in the post industrial landscape of Germany’s western coal mining region. Ecke searches for work, but his hands are too shaky. Dieter attempts to breathe, but his remaining lung is too dusty. An eerie music emerges from the combination of gasping, metallic clatter, the humming of power lines and the sound of hoofbeats in the old mines. Until the devil appears in the tunnels below to form a pact. X is a cinematic ritual aimed at appeasing the ancestral spirits of the industrial workforce. The surreal road movie is inspired by the lives of the filmmaker’s father and grandfather, who also play the lead roles.

Ticketed for What by Yvonne Sung, Canada (set in Toronto)

A peek into Toronto’s homeless community being unfairly ticketed under the Ontario Safe Streets Act.

If There is Not Struggle by Jared Katsiane, US

A young photographer celebrates historical figures via Boston’s public art.

seeing her by Lindsay McInytre, Canada

seeing her is a silent portrait of the filmmaker’s great-grandmother’s amauti. This analogue animation weaves the beaded textures that give space to the labour, skill, and memories that this amauti holds.

Shea, by NASRA by Effy Adar, Canada

A family displaced by greed searches for a new home in a foreign place. As they explore they discover pieces of themselves; old and new. “”Shea”” celebrates what has always remained in Black/African peoples, an innate sense of home, luxury and interconnectedness.