Echoes of Home
This compelling collection of shorts by Latin-Canadian filmmakers invites the viewer into a contemplative space where internal worlds meet external realities. The program navigates the intricate relationship between memory, identity, and place, often through the lens of migration and introspection. From the delicate flight patterns of a hummingbird hand-coloured onto film to the stark inner dialogue of an immigrant’s journey, these works explore moments of profound transition and the nuanced ways we perceive and interact with our environments.
Through diverse experimental approaches—including eco-processed celluloid, autobiographical dance, and fragmented narratives—these films offer intimate glimpses into the human condition. They collectively speak to the impermanence of existence, the lingering reverberations of where we call home, and the silent architectures of the mind. Each film is a synesthetic exploration of our senses, unraveling the intricate ways we perceive the world around us, challenging and expanding our understanding of what it means to see, hear, and feel.
Running time: 53 min
Content warning: Flashing lights
Guests in attendance
lessons on flight
Director Cecilia Araneda | Canada/Chile, 2024 | No dialogue | 4.27 min
Shot on 16 mm film, eco-processed with olives, and hand coloured on site in rural Chile, lessons on flight examines the flight patterns of the green-backed firecrown hummingbird.
Rootless
Director Leslie Gabriela Ortiz | Canada/Toronto, 2025 | English | 7.39 min
Nila is interviewed by an immigration officer in Canada. This marks the beginning of her immigrant journey. She calmly answers the questions, but a chaos of fear and confusion shocks her inner world. A year later, the questions continue on other people’s lips and faces. The last question: “Was it worth it?” prompts Nila to break the fourth wall and look into the camera; the answer is no longer hers alone, but that of whoever is behind the screen.
Impermanence… a dandelion
Director Daniela Carmona Sánchez | Canada/Montreal, 2025 | Spanish and French with English subtitles | 1.08 min
An autobiographical dance film, where impermanence becomes inevitable when you leave your country. Migrating in search of a better quality of life requires not only courage, but also a strong heart capable of enduring the distance from those you love the most. Life turns into an endless nostalgia… for places and people, in tears shed with every farewell, and those suitcases become eternal companions of your loneliness.
Hypnagogia
Director Cecilia Araneda | Canada/Chile, 2024 | No dialogue | 4.37 min
In the threshold between sleep and waking, hallucinations and moments of paralysis take hold. Hypnagogia is an exercise in eco-processing, with different 16 mm B&W film stocks processed with multiple different organic materials, including apples, avocado peel, coffee, grapes, peaches, pomegranate, and wine.
Who Hears As The Wind Blows?
Director Cláudio Cruz, Canada/Brazil, 2025, English, 20 min
A series of experimental vignettes that enter the interior worlds of anonymous individuals. Through sparse visuals and on-screen fragments of thought, the film explores how inner dialogue shapes perception, memory, and identity—inviting viewers to confront the architecture of their own minds.
Soundwalk
Director Andrés Salas, Canada/Vancouver, 2012, English, 15.08 min
Shot on Super 8 mm film, Soundwalk is a journey of complimentary sounds and images from different moments of time in the city of Vancouver, expressed through the work and narration of German-Canadian composer Hildegard Westerkamp. It is an exercise that allows the viewer to live in the present while listening to sounds of the past and to contemplate the future of an environment that changes day by day.