CANADIAN SHORTS – BEFORE FEATURES
CONVIVIAL REBELLION
Thursday, Sept 12 at 8:15 PM
The Cinematheque
Screens before Wild Woman
With director Sidartha Murjani in attendance!
VLAFF Membership required
Dir. Sidartha Murjani
Vancouver/Bali | 2023
No dialogue | 2 min
Two Salsa dancers dance in a coffee shop to La Rebellion by Joe Arroyo.
Sponsored by:
Sidartha Murjani, a multi-disciplinary artist from Bali, Indonesia, he is an actor, writer, and director. His work has been featured in Canadian Screen Award-qualifying festivals. Besides making and being in films Sidartha also serves as Executive Director of the Sundar Prize Film Festival and is Director of Feature Programming at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
LUPE Q AND THE GALACTIC CORN CAKE
Lupe Q y la Arepa Galáctica
Saturday, Sept 7 at 6:15 PM
Saturday, Sept 14 at 8:15 PM
The Cinematheque
Screens before Outsider Girls
With guests Javier Badillo & Magda Ochoa in attendance at the Sept 7 screening!
VLAFF Membership required
Dir. Javier Badillo
Vancouver/Venezuela | 2023
English & Spanish with English subtitles | 5 min
Lupe does not want cooking lessons from her grandma. She has enough with her music skills: her punk rock can shatter objects! But when Lupe and her band find themselves battling a monstrous creature in outer space, her abuela’s lessons finally remind Lupe that connecting to her Latin roots is important, and punk rock is more than just loud music.
Community Partner:
Javier Badillo is a Leo nominated, Venezuelan-Canadian writer, director and producer. After a career as a musician and 2D animator, Javier found a natural fit in independent film. Since 2008, his short films have been selected and won awards at numerous festivals including Chicago Children’s Film Festival, Cinéfest Sudbury, Flickers’ Rhode Island, and Reelworld, among many others. In 2022, Javier released his first feature film, the war drama Roads of Ithriyah, receiving five Leo Award nominations including best picture, best directing and best script, winning for best sound. It was nominated as Best Canadian Film at RIFFA. Javier is currently working on his second film, the sci-fi action comedy Lupe Q and the Galatic Earworms. The script received Telefilm Production Funding, and was selected into the Blood in the Snow Development Lab, placed Top-20 at FilmQuest and Top-10 at Mammoth Lakes, and was selected into the Moviemaker Magazine production program.
THREE ROOMS
Saturday, Sept 7 at 4:15 PM
The Cinematheque
Screens before Igualada
With guest Ándrea López in attendance!
Wednesday, Sept 11 at 2 PM
Cineworks
Screens before Guián
VLAFF Membership required
Dir. Andrea López
Toronto/Colombia | 2024
Mandarin, English & Spanish with English subtitles | 10 min
Three Rooms explores the relationship between mundane living spaces and personal identity through the lens of three Canadian Immigrants in search of a place to call home.
Community Partner:
Andrea López is an upcoming Colombian Director and Photographer based in Toronto, Canada. She is currently in her fourth year at the Toronto Metropolitan University film program. Her films often explore themes of identity, immigration and everyday life.
PASSIFLORA
Monday, Sept 9 at 8:15 PM
The Cinematheque
Screens before All The Fires
With guest Gabriel Souza Nunes in attendance!
VLAFF Membership required
Dir. Gabriel Souza Nunes
Vancouver/Brazil | 2023
English | 14 min
In a modern retelling of Brazilian folklore, nervous and insecure Theo discovers love for the first time at a fantastical, avant-garde party.
*Produced in only 8 days, Passiflora was part of the Top 6 short films selected for the 2023 Crazy8s Competition in Vancouver, BC, an incubator for up-and-coming directors in Canada, promoted by the Director’s Guild of Canada and the Crazy 8s film Society.
Gabriel Souza Nunes (He/They) is an award-winning Brazilian Writer & Director based in Vancouver, BC. After graduating with honours from Vancouver Film School (2019), they had their directorial debut with the sci-fi short film The Party at the Whistler Film Festival 2019, followed right after by short films like Subject 42 (2019), Alone (2020), Goodbye (2021) and All The Things I Never Said To You (currently in post-production). Gabriel believes in the power of mixing emotions, memories and technology as a meaningful form of human expression, navigating through sci-fi, magical realism and improv, always adding a surrealistic twist to their work. They are a strong advocate for representation in front and behind the camera, especially for the Latinx and LGBTQAI+ communities. Their first short documentary I Remember Everything (2022) won Best Latin-Canadian Short Film at the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival 2022, and in January 2023 Gabriel was selected as one of the Crazy8s top 6 directors with the script Passiflora (2023), a queer magical realism short inspired by the Brazilian folklore surrounding the passion fruit.
CANADIAN SHORTS IN PROGRAMS AND BEFORE FEATURES
TERESA’S CHOICE (dir. Marlene Castaños) screens in Meet Me There and precedes Bridges over the Sea
IRIS (dir. Gabriela de Andrade) screens in Meet Me There and precedes My Aunt Gilma
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
