Related: Online Film Screenings

Related runs from March 3-April 24, 2022 in the gallery
Hours: Noon to five, seven days a week
Access the films here starting April 4

Each of these three films present a narrative drawing from family archives, histories, and collaborations with family members, exploring identity through this lense. In various ways, the subjects and their connection to their ancestors is understood through lineage and their relationship to the land that makes up so-called Canada.

All Our Father’s Relations, 2016
56 minutes
Directed by Alejandro Yoshizawa

All Our Father’s Relations (祖根父脈) is a documentary film that tells the story of the Grant siblings who journey from Vancouver to China in an attempt to rediscover their father’s roots and better understand his fractured relationship with their Musqueam mother. Raised primarily in the traditions of the Musqueam people, the Grant family and their story reveals the shared struggles of migrants and Aboriginal peoples today and in the past.

This film helps to record and revitalize the interconnected histories of Chinese Canadian and First Nations relations along the Fraser River in British Columbia. Dating as far back as the 19th century, relations between Chinese and First Nations in Canada were often respectful and mutually beneficial; both peoples supported one another in the face of marginalization and racism.

For more information visit: http://allourfathersrelations.com/
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/292227932

Ste. Anne, 2021
80 minutes
Directed by Rhayne Vermette

It has been four years since Renée (director Rhayne Vermette) turned her back on her Métis community and left her young daughter Athene in the care of her brother and sister-in-law. Consequently, when she returns with no immediate explanation for her disappearance, she finds herself branded an outsider and is left to drift through once-familiar landscapes that have seemingly grown abstract in her absence and navigate fraught reunions with intimates who’ve practically become strangers. Likewise, Renée finds herself wrestling with her own identity.

Casting several members of her family and capturing her home community in alluring 16mm compositions, Vermette, a Winnipeg-based artist, employs recurring painterly shots, experimental flourishes, and evocative collages to lend impressionistic invention to a tale of a prodigal that recalls Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas and other touchstones of the genre. A heady melange of personal details and singular sensibilities, this is a uniquely immersive, deeply meditative, and wholly cinematic expedition into family histories and myths.

Filmmaker’s website: http://rhaynevermette.com/
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/502011055

Damascus Dreams, 2021
83 minutes
Directed by Émilie Serri

Disconnected from her Syrian heritage, filmmaker Émilie Serri grew up in Canada. In the liminal crevices between reality and myth, dream and nightmare, past and future, rests a homeland that is almost accessible. In an effort to repatriate to this place that once was and yet can never be, Serri conjures elegant and poignant images, transcending a sense of realism.

Through the testimony of other Syrians, family photographs, home videos, archival material, and illusory production, the diasporic impacts of conflict come to the fore. Deeply personal, Damascus Dreams invigorates the form of documentary, focusing on questions of memory, loss, and identity, ultimately finding communal resonance around subtle feelings that are otherwise difficult to articulate.

For more information: https://portagefilms.ca/Damascus-Dreams
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/610133730