Canada201919 minEnglishDocumentary, Family, Women Filmmakers
Caught between two seemingly isolated worlds, director Danielle Ayow interrogates her own cultural identity as Trini and Chinese with much heart and humour. Sometimes asking is not enough as Ayow’s process makes clear the harm of essentializing identity and ultimately, the limitations of language.
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival, 2020
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2020
AWARDS
Best Documentary Award, Caribbean Tales International Film Festival, 2020
Danielle Ayow
Danielle Ayow is a Toronto-based writer, actor, and comedian. In 2017, Ayow developed an 8-minute proof of concept version of But You’re Not Black with the help of Reel Asian to secure funding for this 20-minute version. This is her first time directing and writing a documentary.
12 Nov, 2020 10:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
USA202013 minEnglishToronto PremiereDance, Descriptive Captions, Documentary, Open Captions
Rated PG
Paving their own paths towards freedom and independence, Turf Nation follows the street dancers who perform on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) trains in Oakland as they navigate their interpersonal relationships, the system, and their burgeoning dance influence.
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2020
Cinequest Film Festival, 2020
Calgary International Film Festival, 2020
Jun Bae
Jun Bae is a Tokyo-born Korean director. His work often centers on dancers, exploring themes of underground culture and freedom of movement. He holds an MFA degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
12 Nov, 2020 10:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
Canada202022 minEnglishDocumentary, Family, Open Captions
Rated PG
Friend, immigration attorney, father, brother and ultimately a humanist, this inspiring documentary sheds light on the ways El-Farouk Khaki has dedicated himself to creating a world of wellness and oneness.
Jinung Chung
Jinung Chung is the Producer at JbyJ, a team of award-winning documentary artists based in Toronto doing their part to make our world a more inclusive place for all. Chung makes his directorial debut with Accidental Activist.
12 Nov, 2020 10:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
Canada2020120 minEnglishDrama, Family, Women Filmmakers
Reel Asian is proud to present as its Closing Night event a live script read presentation of Scarborough, the anticipated forthcoming film by Reel Asian stalwart filmmaking duo of Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson. The film, an adaptation of Catherine Hernandez’ award-winning novel of the same name, follows three kids in a low-income neighbourhood who find community, compassion, and resilience at a drop-in literacy centre over the course of a school year.
Having just wrapped shooting this summer and looking ahead to a 2021 premiere, we take pause to provide audiences an opportunity to see a sneak preview of select scenes acted out live by members of the cast. The script read will be followed by an intimate discussion about the themes and creative process of bringing this heralded book to life on screen by this trio of celebrated Toronto artists.
19 Nov, 2020 7:00 pm
to 9:00 pm
Liam Diaz
Cast as Bing
Liam Diaz is excited to be making his on-screen debut in his first movie role as Bing in Scarborough. He is an avid performer, and loves singing, dancing, and acting. He also enjoys expressing his artistic side through SFX makeup which he uses on his free time. His favourite stage role to date was playing the role of “young P.T Barnum” from the musical film, The Greatest Showman during the JDL Performing Arts summer showcase.
Ellie Posadas
Cast as Edna
Ellie Posadas is a Filipina-Canadian, Actor, Singer-Songwriter, and Creator from Toronto. She is a member of the award winning comedy group ‘Tita Collective’. Ellie is an alumni of Randolph Academy’s Musical Theatre program. She was featured in the 34th Torino Film Festival Official Selection, Wexford Plaza (CAAMfest, Slamdance) and is also featured in the short film The Morning After (Toronto Inside OUT Festival, Los Angeles OUT fest). Other selected Theatre/Film credits include: Baby Blue Canoe (Wattpad productions), Tita Jokes (Tita Collective), The Penelopiad (Hart House), Emily & EV (Nöta Collective), Silenced (HERstory Counts), and Avenue Q (LOT).
Cherish Violet Blood
Cast as Marie
Cherish Violet Blood is an actor, storyteller, activist and Blackfoot woman hailing from the Blood reserve. Based in Toronto, Cherish is a professionally trained and seasoned performer with active followings in the national Indigenous and international theatre community. Cherish has performed all over North America. Select credits include creator/performer in Material Witness (Spiderwoman Theatre La Mama,NYC), creator/performer in Making Treaty 7 directed by Michelle Thrush in Calgary, AB. The lead role in Deer Woman, a new play that has been touring internationally by Tara Beagan . As a natural comedian Cherish has hosted album release parties as well as community events and fundraisers.
Aliya Kanani
Cast as Ms. Hina
Aliya Kanani is a Toronto-based artist and creator, who has worn many hats, including those of comedian, actor, writer, director, producer and entertainer. She spent the better part of the last year touring internationally with her solo show, Where You From, From?, which sold out at the 2019 Just for Laughs Festival, 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and 2020 World Fringe in Perth. In 2015, Aliya co-created, wrote and co-starred in the wacky sketch web series, Juicy. In addition, she has created, written, directed and produced various online sketches and short films, including It’s My Turn, and short doc, 36 Questions to Love, which she co-directed and co-produced.
Alexis Hancey
Cast as Fern
Alexis Hancey is a Toronto based actress & screenwriter, best known for her role as Narrator in a widely popular/CBC-covered performance of Threepenny Opera at Humber College. She stars as Susan in PG: Psycho Goreman, a feature described by Variety magazine as “blowing the roof off (drive ins) where there was no roof,” and is currently developing a web series in which she plays an HSP patient who wasn’t actually fixed by therapy.
Following the live script read, join moderator Amar Wala as he discusses the journey of bringing Scarborough to the big screen with directors Shasha Nakhai & Rich Williamson and writer Catherine Hernandez.
ASL interpretation will be made available thanks to Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Services. Ticket holders can watch on the CineSend Reel Asian portal.
Shasha Nakhai
Director and Producer, Scarborough
Shasha Nakhai is a filmmaker from Toronto whose work has aired on the BBC, CBC, ZDF, and Arte; screened at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); been nominated for 3 Canadian Screen Awards; and shortlisted for an Oscar. She recently released her first feature documentary, Take Light, which enters the tangled web of Nigeria’s energy crisis.
Rich Williamson
Director, Scarborough
Rich Williamson is an Oscar-shortlisted filmmaker from Toronto. His award-winning films have screened at festivals worldwide, aired on TV, been released on iTunes, gone viral, and featured on the BBC, CBC, Bravo, Arte, ZDF, Al Jazeera, Short of the Week, The Hollywood Reporter, AV Club, Slashfilm, Screenrant, Gizmodo, Mashable, Collider and Nerdist.
Catherine Hernandez
Writer, Scarborough
Catherine Hernandez is the award-winning author of Scarborough and its screenplay adaptation, and the outgoing artistic director of b current performing arts. She has written the critically acclaimed plays Singkil, The Femme Playlist and Eating with Lola and the children’s books M Is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book and I Promise. Her second novel, Crosshairs, was published in September 2020.
Amar Wala
Moderator
Using his cinema to deconstruct notions of race and identity, Amar Wala has directed series for CBC, Viceland, and Shopify Studios. He directed the feature documentary The Secret Trial 5 and is currently director and consulting producer of CBC Arts series In The Making.
Catch Howie Tsui's GIF Roulette this year at the festival, featuring a grid of GIFs in a digital installation, and an artist talk.
Somi and her husband met and fell in love while fighting alongside fellow Naxalites, a communist rebel group fighting for the rights of tribal communities in India for the past 50 years. Although the group represents a quarter of the population and lives in extreme poverty, Naxalites are seen as the biggest threat to national security for the State of India.
This masterclass explores the narrative construction of A.K.A Don Bonus, contextualizing the film in its era but also situating it in contemporary conversation. This event is part of the Reel Ideas Symposium.
Canada202090:00English
Why do we need community archives, and what are the stakes of digitized archiving within the contexts of intentional erasure or a lack of historical records? This panel reflects on the necessity and challenges of archives and archival work, inviting members of community archive initiatives to discuss their work and process.
Featured image courtesy of Vince Ha, from Water Lullabies: Revisiting Roots through Family Photography
The Reel Ideas Symposium - On World-Building responds to a growing momentum of digitization initiatives and strategies through dialogue with artists, community organizers and industry professionals. These sessions gather visions of radical world-building that mobilize, engage and strengthen creative communities, to usher in better presents and futures.
Admission: $3.49 per session / $10.99 for Reel Ideas Access (all panels)
Beau Gomez • Gallery and Programs Coordinator, Critical Distance Centre for Curators
Beau Gomez is a Filipino-Canadian artist and community arts worker. His practice is informed by ideas and conversations around cross-cultural narratives, and equally devotes his time in community engagement through the arts, with contributions to various organizations including Trinity Square Video, The 519, Workman Arts, and Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. In 2019, Beau launched Fixer, a gathering of image-makers and creators in an engaged discussion and critique of recent works in progress. He is currently the Gallery and Programs Coordinator at Critical Distance Centre for Curators.
Katrina Cohen-Palacios • Archivist, Home Made Visible
Katrina Cohen-Palacios processed the archival collection of IBPOC home movies donated by the Home Made Visible project, a participatory archival project which empowered IBPOC communities to describe their own records. She is an Archivist at the York University Libraries Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections.
Vasuki Shanmuganathan • Researcher and Community Organizer, Tamil Archive Project
Vasuki Shanmuganathan is a researcher, educator, and community organizer working at the intersections of race and colonialism. She is a research associate on the Race, Ethics & Power Project at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. She is the founder of the Tamil Archive Project (TAP). A Scarborough-born collective prioritizing non-binary people and women from racialized communities which emerged out of a need for makeshift spaces of belonging by reconfiguring contemporary art and archival practices as part of communal care.
Vince Ha • Filmmaker and Curator, Invisible Footprints
Vince Ha is a writer-director who captures fragmentary moments and uses them to challenge issues of race, class, gender, and representation. He holds an MFA in Documentary Media. His work has been presented locally at Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Gardiner Museum, Buddies in Bad Times, The ArQuives, and Hot Docs Rogers Cinema, and internationally in China, Germany, Japan, Thailand, United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.
15 Nov, 2020 1:00 pm
to 2:30 pm
This conversation invites emerging thinkers, artists and community cultural workers to consider digital futures for those without access to the city arts landscape, and by extension, digital opportunities. This event is part of the Reel Ideas Symposium.
This fireside chat gathers together filmmaker mentors from Reel Asian’s 2020 Unsung Voices incubator to discuss what the building blocks of a good narrative are. This event is part of the Reel Ideas Symposium.
This panel considers how digital tools have been mobilized through varying methods to adapt, respond and address changing socio-cultural contexts, and engage with communities. This event is part of the Reel Ideas Symposium.
Canada2020
I compile an array of GIFs from film and TV that have held significant impact and inform my recent media work. My interest in visual sampling, loops, fragmentation, and memory comes together in this program through an oscillating mosaic of moving images.
GIF Roulette will feature a mixed media sound and text digital installation, and an artist talk.
^Click here to check out the digital installation of GIF Roulette by Howie Tsui, any time online from Nov 1 - 19.
Tickets for the live stream artist talk are free but must be acquired through our ticketing platform.
About Canadian Spotlight
Every year, Reel Asian chooses to spotlight a Canadian filmmaker to showcase local talent and activate their work as part of festival programming, with screenings of the artist’s choice and deep-dive artist talks. This year, with the festival’s move to a digital platform, we are taking the opportunity to introduce innovative, non-traditional, experiential programming made with digital presentation and engagement in mind. Through the Canadian Spotlight, we hope to amplify artistic voices, support sustained engagement with interdisciplinary creative practices, and introduce new audiences to dynamic, contemporary media work.
1 Nov, 2020 12:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
Vancouver visual artist Howie Tsui (Tsui Ho Yan /徐浩恩) was born in Hong Kong and raised in Lagos and Thunder Bay. Working in a variety of media, Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that subvert venerated art forms and narrative genres, often related to the Chinese literati class. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, trauma, acculturation, and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to advocate for liminal and diasporic experiences.
Image c/o Rémi Thériault
Catch Oliver Husain's Lenticular Lencture this year at the festival, featuring a digital installation of "French Exit" and an artist talk.
Catch Howie Tsui's GIF Roulette this year at the festival, featuring a grid of GIFs in a digital installation, and an artist talk.
Catch Sahar Te's KHAAREJ No. 3 this year at the festival, featuring a mixed media sound and text digital installation, and an artist talk.
Canada2020
My practice mobilizes methods that open up alternative realities and confront convention, attempting to challenge common approaches to “original” content and looking into how parallel contrasting realities often exist simultaneously. My interactions with multiple cultures and geographies bring me to question the notion of absolute truth and lead me to explore the role of past narrativization as it shapes the future. These interventions range from linguistics and semiotics, social dynamics and ethics, to media studies and oral histories. Through each project, I engage in sociological and techno-political discourses to understand hegemony within different power structures. Additionally, my personal encounters with sociopolitical situations and interdisciplinary interest in literature, translation, sound, oral history, and theatre bring me to an audio-visual practice.
KHAAREJ No. 3 will feature a mixed media sound and text digital installation, and an artist talk.
^Click here to view the digital installation of KHAAREJ No. 3 by Sahar Te, any time online from Nov 1 - 19.
Tickets for the live stream artist talk are free but must be acquired through our ticketing platform.
About Canadian Spotlight
Every year, Reel Asian chooses to spotlight a Canadian filmmaker to showcase local talent and activate their work as part of festival programming, with screenings of the artist’s choice and deep-dive artist talks. This year, with the festival’s move to a digital platform, we are taking the opportunity to introduce innovative, non-traditional, experiential programming made with digital presentation and engagement in mind. Through the Canadian Spotlight, we hope to amplify artistic voices, support sustained engagement with interdisciplinary creative practices, and introduce new audiences to dynamic, contemporary media work.
1 Nov, 2020 12:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
Sahar Te is a Toronto-based artist whose practice exists at the intersection of research, text, installation, and performance. Te obtained her BFA from Alberta University of Arts, and her MFA from the University of Toronto. Te’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at spaces including the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the University of Toronto Art Museum, SBC Gallery in Montreal, Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Alberta, Lona Galeria in São Paulo, and Darbast Platform in Tehran.
Catch Howie Tsui's GIF Roulette this year at the festival, featuring a grid of GIFs in a digital installation, and an artist talk.
The 2020 Canadian Spotlight features not one but three Canadian media artists who work at the intersections of experiential, experimental moving image and narrative.
Catch Oliver Husain's Lenticular Lencture this year at the festival, featuring a digital installation of "French Exit" and an artist talk.
Canada2020
Lenticular cinema is an invention dating back to the 1930s. Simply put, a fence of thin vertical wires was mounted in front of the screen to create a glasses-free 3D effect. There are very few accounts of viewers who have witnessed this technological wonder in action, and its history is shrouded in myth and propaganda. But imagine, if we had this now, we could free our screens simply by erecting thin wire fences in front of them and, just like that, turn them into holograms. At the same time, we would free ourselves from being bound to the rectangles we’re looking at. We could move along with the holograms, even dance with them, like in the novel The Invention of Morel. That would be so nice.
Lenticular Lencture will feature a digital installation of French Exit, and an artist talk.
^Click here to watch the digital installation of French Exit, by Oliver Husain, online from Nov 1 - 19.
Tickets for the live stream artist talk are free but must be acquired through our ticketing platform.
About Canadian Spotlight
Every year, Reel Asian chooses to spotlight a Canadian filmmaker to showcase local talent and activate their work as part of festival programming, with screenings of the artist’s choice and deep-dive artist talks. This year, with the festival’s move to a digital platform, we are taking the opportunity to introduce innovative, non-traditional, experiential programming made with digital presentation and engagement in mind. Through the Canadian Spotlight, we hope to amplify artistic voices, support sustained engagement with interdisciplinary creative practices, and introduce new audiences to dynamic, contemporary media work.
1 Nov, 2020 12:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain is based in Toronto. Husain’s projects often begin with a fragment of history, a rumour, a personal encounter, or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual pleasures—such as dance, puppetry, costume, and special effects—to animate his research and fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups.
Catch Sahar Te's KHAAREJ No. 3 this year at the festival, featuring a mixed media sound and text digital installation, and an artist talk.
Catch Sahar Te's KHAAREJ No. 3 this year at the festival, featuring a mixed media sound and text digital installation, and an artist talk.
Catch Howie Tsui's GIF Roulette this year at the festival, featuring a grid of GIFs in a digital installation, and an artist talk.
Germany, Poland201984 minPolish, Vietnamese with English subtitlesDrama, Family, Family-friendly, Open Captions, Women Filmmakers
What does a hot bowl of lovingly prepared soup remind you of? The taste of home? The warm embrace of a loved one? For Long, a widower and cook at a Vietnamese restaurant in Warsaw, his famous pho is his pride, and his grade-school daughter Mia is his joy. But their world changes when the restaurant is sold, forcing Long to learn to make sushi. Meanwhile, Mia is frustrated by her father's caring but old-fashioned ways, while fearing he is moving on from the memory of her late mother.
Japan-born, Polish-educated director Mariko Bobrik’s first feature tells a tender and bittersweet look at an intergenerational immigrant family with a confidently light touch from (perhaps) an unexpected Eastern European source. While Poland is their home, Long and Mia both must navigate what the idea of home means for them when dealing with change, while finding a better understanding of each other.
– Aram Siu Wai Collier
Thang Long Do
Lena Nguyen
Aleksandra Domanska
OFFICIAL SELECTION
San Sebastián Film Festival, 2019
Osaka Asian Film Festival, 2020
FIN Atlantic International Film Festival, 2020
Mariko Bobrik
Mariko Bobrik was born in Japan in 1983. She graduated from the directing course of the Lodz Film School. She participated in Cinéfondation: Résidence du Festival de Cannes and Berlinale Talents. The Taste of Pho is her first feature. She currently lives in Warsaw.
12 Nov, 2020 10:00 am
to 19 Nov, 2020 11:59 pm
PG
CW: Racial slurs
ASL interpretation will be made available thanks to Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Services. Ticket holders can watch on the CineSend Reel Asian portal.
November 15, 2020 at 4PM
Cambodian-born Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny takes a Hi8 camcorder into his final year of high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, documenting intersecting events happening at school, at home, and amongst friends and family.
Four fearless emerging filmmakers embarked on a summer-long filmmaking journey online. We’re proud to present their world premiere here. Includes winner of Air Canada Short Film or Video Award, Reel Asian 2020 일요일 (Sunday).
These six dynamic films touch upon art not solely as a creative practice for self expression but an integral force in making space, along with the responsibilities that come with it.
Canada2020120:00English
Deep dive into this critical archival film with director Spencer Nakasako, Reel Asian, and the Asian Institute! This masterclass will explore the narrative construction of A.K.A Don Bonus, methods of production, the vlog-style documentary format, and contextualize the film in its era but also situate it in ongoing contemporary conversations.
This event is hosted in partnership with the Asian Institute
Featured image courtesy of Spencer Nakasako
The Reel Ideas Symposium - On World-Building responds to a growing momentum of digitization initiatives and strategies through dialogue with artists, community organizers and industry professionals. These sessions gather visions of radical world-building that mobilize, engage and strengthen creative communities, to usher in better presents and futures.
Admission: Free / $10.99 for Reel Ideas Access (all other panels)
*Ticket Registration for the A.K.A Don Bonus Masterclass includes access to the A.K.A Don Bonus film.
Aram Siu Wai Collier • Head of Programming, Reel Asian
Aram Siu Wai Collier is a filmmaker, educator, and film festival programmer. He has a background in documentary, editing the award-winning feature documentary Refugee and directing/editing the short doc Who I Became. His subsequent dramatic and experimental film work has played festivals in the United States, Canada, Japan, and China. From 2011-2014, his omnibus live music and film project Suite Suite Chinatown toured Canada, Asia, and the United States. In 2017, he wrote, directed, edited, and produced the feature film Stand Up Man, which had its World premiere at the Atlantic Film Festival and its International Premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Most recently Aram directed and edited the award-winning short documentary A Sweet & Sour Christmas for CBC. He is currently the Head of Programming at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and teaches Media Production at Humber College.
Spencer Nakasako • Director
Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker. He won a National Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a Cambodian refugee teenager that aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary about a Iu Mien refugee teenage couple growing up too fast in Oakland, California, also aired on P.O.V. His third film in his trilogy about Southeast Asian youth, Refugee, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and garnered major awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival and Hamptons Film Festival. Nakasako is the founder of the ground-breaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District where he collaborated with youth from the neighborhood on filmmaking for 17 years.
Miko Revereza • Filmmaker
Miko Revereza is a filmmaker raised in California and currently residing between several countries. His upbringing as an undocumented immigrant in the United States informs his relationship with moving images. DROGA! (2014), DISINTEGRATION 93-96 (2017), No data plan (2018) and Distancing (2019) have widely screened at festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NYFF Projections and Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Aside from these films, Revereza produces expanded cinema, direct animation, performance, criticism and publishing including works such as Biometrics (2018), Live Cinema (2019-2020) and Towards a Stateless Cinema (2019). Revereza is listed as Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema, a 2019 Flaherty Seminar featured filmmaker and MFA graduate at Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He is a 2021 recipient of the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking.
17 Nov, 2020 6:30 pm
to 8:30 pm
Cambodian-born Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny takes a Hi8 camcorder into his final year of high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, documenting intersecting events happening at school, at home, and amongst friends and family.
November 12 - 19
Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
401 Richmond Street West, The Commons (Suite 448)
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8 Canada
(416) 703 – 9333
info@reelasian.com
Charitable number: 870021383RR0001
