Glimpses of Life
It can be easy to overfocus on ourselves and get caught up in our own lives without acknowledging everyone else living around us. Glimpses of Life is a peek into worlds we may not know, breaking down assumptions and expanding our focus to community and each other.
Program curated by Nishina Loft
Nishina Loft is Kanien’kehá:ka from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. She is a 2S queer, multi-disciplinary artist in a wide spectrum of mediums. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from York University in Theatre Production and Design. She is the Associate Programmer for TQFF and has worked in programming for imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Breakthroughs and JAYU Film Festival. She continues to grow within her field and explore new opportunities.
Partners
Films
Better at Texting
Mary Galloway
Trinity – a radical, Indigenous, feminist – and Addison – a devout, Black Mormon – are forced to work together on a school project. They soon discover they have more in common than either cares to admit.
Mary Galloway is an award-winning, mixed Cowichan and settler descent filmmaker, actor, and fierce trailblazer paving the way for Indigi-queer content creation. Her achievements include being a TIFF Rising Star, a WFF Talent to Watch, a recipient of WIFTV’s Newcomer Award, and being named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of Breakouts Making An Impact on Hollywood. Recently, she released her web series Querencia and is a recent graduate of the CFC’s Director’s Lab 2021.
Project Ea
Becks Harborne
Keri is an engineer, part of the team building a rocket to save humanity. She finds out too late that her lover, a deaf concert pianist, will not be permitted to board. She must decide whether to face a life without them or stay by their side and die together.
Becks Harborne (They/Them) is a filmmaker and artist based in the UK. “Project Ea,” the darkly romantic animated short, is their debut film. It explores the moral realities of the STEM industry. Their main career goal is to become showrunner on an animated series for a major production company.
Beast
Aileen Ye
“Beast” is a martial arts inspired dance-fight between a lion dancer and queer performer, reflecting the cultural tension between traditional and modern identities in a dreamscape nightmare. The dance represents both entities seeking to co-exist and find unity.
Aileen Ye is an award-winning Irish-Chinese filmmaker from Dublin. Currently, she is based in the Netherlands. Her works reveal entangled narratives and the complex social structures within Asian diasporas, memories, and heritage.
holding hands with the moon
Soah
“holding hands with the moon” is a celebration of a not-so-common-coming-of-age film inspired by the pandemic. Terra is not only learning to live with her anxiety, but also appreciating all of the little things in life. Through it all though, magic is never too far away from Terra’s familiar life.
Soah is a Tucson and New York City based filmmaker who likes creating worlds she can disappear into for a while. Her art at the moment mainly revolves around girlhood, solitude, magic, nature, and what makes us human. Soah encourages folks to look, listen, and stay a while.
She said, she said
Fraser Hannay
On a cold, snowy day, awaiting a ride home, a young woman and her friend reminisce
about a party they attended a year prior. This short was based on the theme “shifting
perspectives.”
Fraser Michael is an aspiring filmmaker from Vancouver, BC, and has been making short films and video projects with friends from a young age. He is currently in his first year studying film at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson).
Halves & Doubles
Adam Mbowe
Despite the close bond between Adam and her sibling Khadija there is trauma unspoken between them. In this short documentary, the two hold a conversation
where they attempt to find mutual understanding through the winding road of expressing emotions.
Adam Mbowe is a Gambian/Canadian, Montreal-based filmmaker. Recently a graduate from Concordia University, creating art through moving images has given her the means to describe experiences that may otherwise be forgotten or rarely explained. It has given her the power to illustrate blackness and queerness through film as reclamation.
Katinnigak (Together)
Glenn Gear
Set against a kaleidoscopic background of bead work in juicy colours and featuring a small cast of animal characters from Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador), this animated short is a celebration of traditional Inuit throat singing.
Glenn Gear is an Indigiqueer filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist of Inuit and settler descent currently living in Montréal. He is originally from Corner Brook Newfoundland and has family ties to Nunatsiavut. His practice is grounded in a research creation methodology shaped by Inuit and Indigenous ways of knowing.
Maachi Kashihtow
Sheri Osden Nault
This short is a poetic reflection on tactile knowledge as cultural connection. It explores culturally rooted creative processes as a form of futurism, allowing us to connect to past, present, and future through relationships with human and non-human kin. The visuals bring together documentation of the land, basket weaving, beading, zine-making, and tattooing.
Sheri Osden Nault is Two-Spirit Michif artist, community worker, and educator. Their work spans mediums including sculpture, performance, installation, and more, integrating cultural, social, and experimental creative processes. Their work considers embodied connections between human and non-human beings, land-based relationships, and kinship sensibilities as an Indigenous Futurist framework.
Don't Text Your Ex
Jo Güstin
An elderly couple remembers the time they broke up with each other and warns the youth about the gravity of a particular type of heartbreak: a queer heartbreak.
Jo Güstin is an intersectionality writer, director, producer and comedian, who celebrates black queer joy and creativity using fiction and comedy. After Cameroon, France, Germany and Japan, the multilingual novelist now lives in Canada where she launched the creative production company DEARNGE SOCIETY. “Don’t Text Your Ex” is her debut film.