11:00 am - Doors Open
Docs North | Docs Nord 6 meet & greet
We are excited to announce the return of Docs North Filmmaking Workshop this September 10th-14th! During the workshop emerging and independent film, television, and digital media producers from Northern Ontario learn about the art, craft, and fundamentals of filmmaking from leading experts.
12:00 pm - Lupicínio Rodrigues - Feature Film
Lupicínio Rodrigues - Confessions of a Sufferer Directed by Alfredo Manevy
About: Unseen images and rare interviews of one Brazil’s most important musicians, Lupicínio Rodrigues, an artist defending a bohemian lifestyle as a basis for artistic creativity, facing the challenges of the music industry, racism and a military dictatorship.
Bio: Born in Brazil, in 1977. After earning a film degree from the University of São Paulo he started his career as an assistant director, produced shorts and worked for several years as film critic and film researcher, with postdoctoral stage at Babelsberg University, Germany. He coordinated a twenty film theaters circuit in São Paulo outskirts focused on the inclusion of unprivileged people. Confessions of a sufferer is his first feature film.
2:00 pm - shorts session
Yellow Dove Aftermath Directed by Rony Abovitz
Description: The surreal experiences of Yellow Dove in his bunker within the world of Hour Blue.
Bio: Rony has been a technology and visual pioneer for a number of years, creating companies such as Magic Leap and MAKO Surgical. He is applying his blend of tech and creativity in Sun and Thunder, developing the Hour Blue Storyworld and animated films that express that world.
Call Me if You Miss Me Directed by Pablo Balboa
Walter Barish, a hopeful yet melancholic 25 year old office worker, is trying to get in contact with a lost relationship, Amelie Flowers. To face his feelings, he needs to make a crucial phone call however he is trapped in his own mind where his subconscious has turned against him.
Bio: A Mexican visual artist currently living in Canada, focusing in growing as an artist by making films, graphic design, and exploring new ways to visually tell a story.
Faith the Conqueror Directed by Onur Yagiz
Description:This Saturday is a Turkish wedding day at Espace Venise (France). Huddled in a car in the parling lot, Fatih, 21, wants to get married. He has set his sights on Ipek, Recep’s sister. But neither Murat, his best friend, nor Recep, nor even Ipek are aware of this yet.
Bio: Onur Yagiz (1986) was born in France to Turkish parents. He studied literature, theatre and film at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, before directing “Patika” (2013) and “Toprak” (2017). Fatih the Conqueror is his third film.
Chick-a-Duck Directed by Rebeka Herron
CHICK-A-DUCK is an unusual animal. She’s a chicken.
Except when she sneezes, then she turns into a Duck.
POP! When she sneezes again, POP! She turns back. Which
wouldn’t be a huge problem, but her new best friend is DUST
BUNNY. A brown bunny surrounded by a cloud of dust, he
accompanies Chick-a-Duck wherever she goes.
Bio: As an aspiring mixed race Latina director Rebeka Herron has directed 2 seasons of the fitness series Kiss My Incoming Abs, music videos I Need Me and Honey, 8 social media beer commercials and the animated short film Chick-a-Duck. Rebeka is an alumna of Capilano University’s Motion Picture Program and the Cineplex Entertainment Film Program Producers’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre. Rebeka is a member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) and Women in Film and TV – Toronto (WIFT-T). Rebeka worked in development for Brightlight Pictures before transitioning to the story department on several lifestyle and reality programs, including the award-winning series, Ice Pilots NWT. Rebeka’s latest project about the sport ringette was chosen out of 9,000 submissions to be developed by CBC through their Covid-19 CBC Relief Fund.
Rebeka works as a freelance Line Producer at Taqqut Productions, an Inuit production company specializing in animation and children’s content. She line produced and production managed the animated children’s series Ukaliq and Kalla; Shaman’s Apprentice, a stop-motion project directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk; and UNNIKKATUAT, a four part documentary series following the creation of a multimedia circus performance that was shot in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Yellowknife, and Igloolik, Nunavut.
Game, Set, Match Directed by Zachary Viola
Bryn is an analytical matchmaker with an illustrious career putting people together. She keeps tabs on a client’s crush and determines their compatibility based on their traits and characteristics. Unfortunately for Bryn, this method has not gotten her any new clients recently and her business is on a steady decline.
That’s when she discovers that there’s a new matchmaker in town, “Mister Match”, who has been using a morally ambiguous technique to match people – a love potion. When she approaches him about this and threatens to go to the police, Everett (Mister Match) appeals to her pride and challenges her to a game: if she gets more matches than him in a week, he’ll back off.
Bryn accepts and the game is afoot…
3:00 pm - Maestro Roman Toi - Feature Film
Maestro Roman Toi Beautiful songs I dedicate to you Directed by Kalli Paakspuu
About: For five decades Estonian-Canadian Maestro Roman Toi composed and conducted choral works and toured a Singing Revolution worldwide to restore freedom and democracy to the Republic of Estonia. Adapted from Roman Toi’s 2007 autobiography with broadcast recordings of Roman Toi’s music to the photography of Karl Hintser who follows the Estonian musicians’ escape to Danzig and to Germany’s DP camps. American Julien Bryan’s photography of daily life in Poland, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany between 1935 -1939 features the Nazi assault on modern art at the popular and infamous Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art] exhibition in Munich in 1937.
4:30 pm - Bitter sweet session
You Ask to Much Directed by Ajay Rakhraj
(Listen on loudspeakers or with headphones.)
“You Ask Too Much” is a short film shot from the point of view of a near-deaf 94-year-old Sikh woman forcibly moved from her son’s care to her daughter’s.
We see what she sees. We hear what she hears. We feel what she feels.
The film explores her emotions and experiences — highlighting the stress, anger, love, and boredom of her condition — ultimately landing on a realization of the pain she believes she has caused her family.
Bio: Ajay Rakhraj is a 28-year-old Burmese-Indian filmmaker from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. “You Ask Too Much” is the culmination of his focus on subjective storytelling through the use of Point-of-View in his early short films “An Exercise in Distraction” and “Tell Me A Story.” Unlike the previous films with purely passive/observational protagonists, “You Ask Too Much” is set in the POV of a character who actively participates in their world. Ajay Rakhraj continues to develop feature-length narratives and documentaries centring around an individual’s subjective experience as they interact with an incomprehensible and unavoidable societal system.
A Sack of Heavy Feathers Directed by Salomon Alonso
Alice Bromlow, a ragged, overworked writer in her 50s, has her life turned upside down after her son disappears out of thin air. As she grows hopeless when her search for him is uneffective, a mysterious man appears in her driveway, claiming to know Matthew. Realizing this might be her only chance to find her son, Alice must decide if she is willing to trust this stranger or accept the reality she refuses to believe.
Bio: Hey! My name is Salomon Alonso and I am a Colombian artist currently living in Canada doing short films!
Meet The Sky Directed by KJ Edwards
Two sisters travel to a reservation to learn about Kanien’kehá:ka culture. Due to the progression of her illness, Andie intends to live out her days there. Mel, on the other hand, rejects both the truth about Andie’s diagnosis and the importance of bringing ceremony into their lives.
Bio: KJ Edwards is a Kanien’kehá:ka and mixed settler filmmaker and video editor. Their family is from Kahnawa:ké and Longueuil, Quebec, Canada; while KJ was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Winter Break Directed by Lasha Ariel Mowchun
After losing his job Serena’s dad is stuck in a cycle of online gambling and self loathing. Meanwhile Serena escapes boredom by performing film scenes, based on old Hollywood movies, for an imaginary audience in her bedroom. But when Serena steals one of her dads ties to use as a prop, the separate lives of father and daughter clash.
Gentle Hum of Spring Directed by Simon Garez
As the spring thaw approaches in Saskatchewan, a young beekeeper struggles to maintain his bee colonies.
Bio:
I am a Saskatoon-based actor and director who works in French and English. Raised in Saskatchewan, I hold a BFA from Simon Fraser University and a diploma from the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts.
My directorial debut, Torch Narrows (2021), won the Saskatchewan Independent Film Awards for Best Short Film and Best Technical Achievement. My second short film, Gentle Hum of Spring (2022), was made with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, SK Arts, SK Filmpool, and Fransaskois Cultural Council. It was selected for Telefilm’s Not Short on Talent program at Clermont-Ferrand and won the awards for Best Saskatchewan Short at RIFFA and Best Canadian Short at Cinéma sous les étoiles.
Alongside my art practice, I work with bees and honey production.
5:45 pm - Lessons From The Sunflower - Feature Film
The Bloom Directed by Jody Xiong
For the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Paralympic held at the bird’s nest in Beijing , Chinese artist Jody Xiong was invited by Chief Director Zhang Yimou to create a technologically-powered art installation called ‘The Bloom’. The project brought together 12 disabled people around an 8-meter wide, circular canvas to create a colorful smiley face by detonating paint-filled balloons using the power of their minds. It is a tech and art experiment, an expression of the strength of the disabled. This short film really records the process of the experiment.
Bio: Jody was born in 1973 in Hunan Province, China. He graduated from Hunan University Of Technology Business and the Central Academy of Arts & Design, and New York Film Academy director class in China. He has served as Group Creative Director at Ogilvy Shanghai and worked for various 4A agencies, such as Leo Burnett Shanghai and DDB Shanghai. In 2016, Jody founded a creative agency, The Nine. In five years, The Nine Shanghai has created many influential campaigns for different brands such as 2022 Winter Olympics, 2022 Winter Paralympics, Coca Cola, Durex, Volvo and Tencent, and ranked second among the hottest creative institutions in China, and was named TOP 12 Aisa’s Most Awarded Creative Leaders in Campaign Brief Asia Creative Rankings in 2021.
Lessons From The Sunflower Directed by Ava Johanna Karvonen
About: The inspiring story of one artist’s determination to make the most of a second go at life. Steven Csorba uses his experience as a survivor of devastating illness, and the example of resilience and beauty in the struggle that he draws from a simple, common garden plant to help others understand how they too can overcome enormous challenges to healing, improve their overall health, discover a deeper purpose in life and ultimately find the happiness all of us yearn for.
7:30 pm - The Last Stop - Feature Film
The Last Stop: Canada's Lost Locomotive Directed by Kaio Kathriner
About: On one of Canada’s deepest lakes, a mysterious shipwreck in 1947 results in the sinking of an entire train. Lost underwater for 75 years, a diver and his team set out to rediscover and extract this historic steam locomotive, in a lake with depths of up to 1000ft. Even with the help of the last living survivor, a 99 year old brakeman who was on the train that fateful day, the grueling search tests the expedition team. A more intimate discovery then unveils itself surrounding the townsfolk who call these remote British Columbia mountains home.
Bio:Kaio Kathriner is a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker whose short film and documentary work received “The Flaming Faun” for Best of Switzerland – Audience Choice Award at Shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival 2019. From shooting at Everest Base Camp to on-ice with NHL superstar Connor McDavid, his filmmaking adventures have landed him in Nepal, Cambodia, Peru and the US, as well as shooting for FIFA+, NHL Studios, NBC Sports, CBC Arts, and Warner Music Canada. His narrative short “The Day We Left” is currently airing on CRAVE and is in feature development through the Harold Greenberg Fund. Kaio’s is also wrapping up post production on first feature documentary “The Last Stop: Canada’s Lost Locomotive”.
