This celebratory event celebrated the many filmmakers, friends, and organizations that have supported us thus far. This event will act as a fundraiser for our new lab/workshop/residency space and future program expenses through by-donation entry at each location.

The first part of the fundraiser took place at Liquidation World and Red Gate Art Society, and included: an Alumni Merch Market with items by David Avelino, Sean Brennan, Gabi Dao, Barry Doupè and Dennis Ha, Owen Ellis, Avalon Fast, © Linda Fox, Phoebe Parsons, stuck productions, Al Razutis, Richard Reeves, Second Spring, PIG FREEZE STUDIOS, Evan Swain, & more; a Music Video Open Screening (featuring films by Kaila Bhullar, Dave Biddle, Dana Bontempo, Sean Brennan, Celina de Leon, Owen Ellis, lisa g, Jo Gaffney, Pablo Garcia Garcia, Natali Karajeh, Phoebe Parsons, stuck productions, Richard Reeves, Coral Short, Strawberry, Amanda Thomson & Rafael Zen); a Bring Your Own Blank Screenprinting with designs by Nada El-Omari, Anna Hawkins, Phoebe Parsons, and an in-house design by Liquidation World, sponsored and printed by Good Luck Studios; and a surprise performance by stuck productions.

The second part of the fundraiser took place at The Lido, and featured: live performances by Strawberry and © Linda Fox; DJ sets by Owen Ellis and TRAXXSTAR; visuals by Chris Strickler and Pablo Garcia Garcia; and homemade small plates and cocktails by Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora and Hannah Eriksson.

Moving through the complexities of relation where light is both gentle and sharp—illuminating what is hidden, obscuring what is clear—revealing the tensions between absence and presence. These artists explore dynamic forces in nature and emotion: light refracting through water, shadows cast on stone and flora, moments of tenderness and rupture. They provide glimpses into the ways love grows wild in the spaces where matter meets, collides, and transforms, and ultimately capture the restless interplay of energies that shape both the landscapes we inhabit and the intimacies we hold.

Screening: Emma Roufs, Bram Ruiter, Daniel Robin, Chris Chong Chan Fui, Carolee Schneemann, Tiziana La Melia, Maryse Larivière, Carolynne Hew, and Sarah Wood

A special end of summer BBQ bash with Echo Park Film Centre North.This casual outdoor screening included a well deserved screening of Matt Davies' "Grit" in its true celluloid form, plus a special screening of "SoVa A-Z: A South Vancouver Cinematic Alphabet" community film and a community animation activity in support of Palestine organized by Wynn.

This series of moving-image portholes by BC-based, Canadian and international experimental filmmakers have influenced curators Kasper Feyrer and Kara Hansen’s individual and shared interest in queer ecological intimacies and parasitic film reveries, through tactile and playful approaches to relational cinematic processes.

Screening: Matt Davies, Nazli Dinçel, Dawn George, Barbara Hammer, Nancy Holt + Robert Smithson, and Mike MacDonald

"Fairy clocks" is another name for dandelions: the fuzzy, many-petaled flowers with lion toothed leaves often considered to be merely garden weeds. Participants in this workshop learned Bolex H-16 camera basics while making a collective 16mm film poem. Through collective learning, each participant was guided to shoot a section of black and white negative film in the garden, which was daisy-chained into a six minute in-camera edited film. Following the shoot, participants foraged Fairy Clocks in the surrounding area and prepared a plant-extraction that was be used to process the collective film.

This screening is a dissemination of life, objects, and bodies into experimental filmic material and digital artifice; an anatomic reflection on the afterlife, reincarnation and personification after death. In these works, flesh is a cavity for trans-cultural experiences, subject to temporal atrophy and manipulation. This program considers the corporal experience and its relation to personal cinematic creation.

Screening: Charles de Augustin, Martin Dávalos, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Nik Liguori, Carolina Meza, and Nuria González Pimentel

Presented in collaboration with Gallery Gachet

These reflective works flow between fragments of memory across individual and collective landscapes, forming new frameworks for reconciling identity, embodiment, and place. Part one showcases four new works collectively entitled To Map Alongside Belonging. Over eight months, a cohort of local BIPOC artists drew from their individual experiences to consider the intersections of personal and communal, and respond to Gallery Gachet’s positionality within the Downtown Eastside. The films in this programme are conscious vessels that respond, manipulate, and contribute to an ever growing archive of intergenerational and diasporic stories. Curated by XINEMA, part two responds to the work of Gallery Gachet’s cohort, and features three experimental works by three international filmmakers. The films combine uniquely manipulated analogue, digital, and archival images into rites of remembering; codices for (re)discovering personal histories, identities, and sites of becoming.

Part one screening: Kaila Bhullar, Luis Andrés Serrano, Monica Cheema, and Ogheneofegor Obuwoma

Part two screening: Nada El-Omari, Martin Molina Gola, and Rhayne Vermette

N: a point in euclidean space representing infinity in all directions; a dimension that extends beyond the familiar. Through these seven local works, the perceptive qualities of holography and its relationship to the physical world are accentuated through the lens of the n-dimension. Drawing from the Holographic Paradigm Theory, they portray a world where there is order in chaos and uncertainty is only superficial. Portrayed through the celluloid medium, these films use thematic repetition, crystalline imagery, and structural experimentation to queer our comprehension of the unknown.

Screening: Kasper Feyrer, Tamara Henderson, Peter Lipskis, Sam Perry, and Al Razutis

Blue: a wavelength hardly visible to the human eye, a reminder of the colours we are incapable of seeing, that surround us – but have been rendered invisible. In this two-part XINEMA presentation, notes on the colour blue consists of a series of international and local experimental films that recount experiences of grief, love, distance, and interiority associated or felt through blue hues.

Screening: Marzieh Mosavarzadeh, Anna Hawkins, Iris Blauensteiner + Christine Moderbacher, Holly Fisher, and Hope Tucker

Plus: a screening of "Blue" (1993) directed by Derek Jarman

These five short experimental films by local and international filmmakers observe Palestinian place, relation, and history as they are and have been represented through images and artifacts. The program reflects on each filmmaker’s experience in and apart from their homeland, and speaks to personal and familial perspectives on displacement and occupation.

Screening: Kamal Aljafari, Alaa Abu Asad, Razan AlSalah, Basma al-Sharif, and Natali Karajeh

Celebrating one year of XINEMA, this open submission screening showcases short works by alumni and close supporters. Celebrating BC’s rich film community, the program will showcase films from 1997 to present that explore topics of love, longing, new imaginaries, the Anthropocene, and more.

Screening: Kaila Bhullar, Dave Biddle, Dana Bontempo, Nita Bowerman, Inanna Cusi, Celina de Leon, Andy Dongan Liu, Barry Doupè, Deborah Edmeades, Mena El Shazly, Owen Ellis, lisa g, Jo Gaffney, Chantal Gering, Miriam Goi, Sidney Gordon, Patricia Gruben, MilleFeuille, Miss Marr, Richard Martin, Richard Martin, Tizeana La Melia, Oliver New, Hân Phạm, Ileana Pietrobruno, Jaewoo Kang, Niloufar Samadi, Juli Saragosa, Coral Short, Michael V Smith, Joshua Stevenson, Amanda Thomson, Kirk Tougas, Richard Reeves, Sara Wylie, and Rafael Zen + Khalil Alomar.

A three-film spooktacular including a viscous cockroach invasion, an inspiring severed-head haunting, and a bodacious bloody threesome. Follow the sun and be confronted with life's deepest low-budget lessons through the twisted missions of an insectuous gamer, gatekeeping god, and bloodthirsty femme-doms.

Screening: schnüdlbug, Owen Ellis, and Jo Gaffney

A collection of short films that explore the impact the queer and diasporic experience have on temporal and bodily manipulation. Using the screen as a space to research and connect, these five artists return to the personalized domestic and familiar to better understand themselves and the world around them.

Screening: danielle Mackenzie Long, Gabi Dao, Jasmine Liaw, Alisa Tarabrina, and Wendel Vistan

Explore the chasms of the human subconscious and confront the creatures of cannibalistic psychedelia in this hypnotic film experience. If you haven’t entered into deep slumber by the end of the program, something has gone terribly wrong…

Screening: Dave Biddle, Pablo Garcia Garcia, Phoebe Parsons, and Rafael Zen

In this three-session workshop series, participants learned hands-on filmmaking processes including Super8 camera operation, eco-development and handmade cinema techniques. Group discussions guided the creation of individual or group experimental films that were featured in an open community screening celebrating collective queer experiences!

A seven-film exploration of the intersections between identity & fantasy. Experience the depths of queer imagination and resiliency in the face of earthly alienation – done through the lens of a Lesbian Vampire, Pink Fairy, Jesus, Tom Waits and more!

Screening: Coral Short + Pippi Zornoza, TJ Cuthand, Aryo Khakpour, Debora O., Julia Sagarosa, Mo Bradley, and Michael Venus

This program features a live-action “girl horror”, an obscure excerpt from a 3D computer animated film, and a multimedia stop-motion short. Enter into the psychotropic effects of social isolation, the dark beauty of chaos, and discomfort of the unknown...

Screening: Barry Doupè, Avalon Fast, and Oliver New

A duo of gender-defying films — a 2002 feature-length erotic pirate adventure and a 2013 short film, a tender homage to the Czech feminist filmmaker, Věra Chytilová.

Screening: Ileana Pietrobruno and Jaewoo Kang

What happens between birth and death? This program invokes the existential feeling you get when you remember you're a living entity on a floating ball in space. These films illustrate earth as a foreign site of creation, sustenance, and destruction; encompassing life's experiences through personal contemplations, precarious documentation, and a karaoke sing-along.

Screening: Rafael Zen + Khalil Alomar + Luciana Siebert, Inanna Cusi, Ann Marie Fleming, MiruFiyu, Lisa G., and Evan Swain

This program studies moving images' ability to influence and construct our senses. Through a series of eight short films, perception becomes a filmic language, spoken through an illusive spectacle of grain and pixels. This program explores the registration of light, sound, and motion; observing our interpretation of existence and the factors that contribute to it.

Screening: Kaila Bhullar, Andrew Power, David Jeric Avelino, Amanda Thomson, Elysia Bourne + Ross Birdwise, Cam Kletke, Sidney Gordon, and Kirk Tougas

The Polygon Gallery and XINEMA present The Pulse of the Screen, a program of experimental films that proposes the screen as a vibrant, lifelike body. Rhythmic vibrations and syncopated movements, which arise simply from the images’ pixels or the camera’s focus, suggest organic activities such as metabolism, sensory experience, and breath.As screens become increasingly integrated in everyday life, these six abstract, hypnotic shorts imagine ways in which the moving image might resemble a living entity in its own right. The films played on a continuous loop at the Gallery from December 28 – 31, 2022.

Screening: Barry Doupé + Yota Kobayashi, Richard Reeves, Joshua Stevenson, Ovide Cohen, and Nita Bowerman

An eclectic collection of eight short films that dismantle and mock systemic structures of normalcy. This program dissects the impressionable nature of human behavior; using humor, reflection, and vulnerability to celebrate autonomy. In parallel to their content, the forms of these films know no boundaries.

Screening: Sean Brennan, Deborah Edmeades, Denise Kenney, Celina de Leon, Ivan Li, Coral Short, and Michael V. Smith

This program screens nine films that embody the dual existence of language within communication. Vocal absence and presence acknowledge language’s ability to exclude, construct, and bind. Some investigate the foreign as form; dissecting words into shapes and vibrations. Others render intimate portrayals of connection and disconnection. Together, these films display the vastness of voice, conveying the necessity of communication, and the implications of silence.

Screening: Dana Bontempo, Nita Bowerman, Mena El Shazly, Patricia Gruben, Alger Ji-Liang, Xinyue Liu, Hân Phạm, Rea Saxena, and Svava Tergeson

"Times Long Past" is a phrase derived from the feeling of an unportrayable memory, an allusion to how objects, people, and places represent and convey the past. This program brings together seven films that reflect on the materialization and embodiment of time through fragmented structures, abstract recollections, and emblematic degradation.

Screening: Brittney Appleby, Sammy Chien, Richard Martin, Lindsay McIntyre, Luis Serrano, and Sydney Southam