Ghosts Which Do Not Speak
Priyo Ami (Dear Me)
SuchanaPriyo Ami (Dear Me) is a film about a woman in search of herself. She discovers unpleasant truths, and childhood traumas, and deals with her fragmented reality. It is a journey of realization about loneliness, madness, and emptiness within herself and how she comes to terms with it.
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This program explores a haunted presence: whether through the examination of everyday fears and anxieties or in the memories of people who remain in our thoughts, even long after their physical presence is gone from our lives.
In some cases, memories have the potential to become vague and foggy with time. Like ghosts, the memories presented by the filmmakers in this program have continual cause and effect—and in some cases, a lingering afterlife on the internet.
These ghosts cannot necessarily speak for themselves, but through these frames are able to find ways to make their presence known. In doing so, they are able to find their voice in connection. By way of others in the narrative or, ultimately, with the audience, it is through connection that these feelings and memories are made known, no longer anonymous ghosts but rather spectres that need to be acknowledged.
The first half of this program is representative of those haunted presences which have a cause: asking how we reconcile with what we fear and what has happened? The second half is reflective of the effect: how do we cope with this presence? Do we let it consume us or do we change?
These spectres are the seeds of change that lead to growth—calling one to either break from what we fear or to embrace what is unknown, what could be.
Content Warning: Visual effects include strobe lighting.
Suchana is an animator and filmmaker based in Mumbai. She studied at SRFTI and has worked with Swiggy, Khatabook, UNDP, Khabar Laharaiya, Reliance, Quest, and many more. Her award-winning film Maa Tuki (2018) was selected for 51 international film festivals, including VGIK, IIT-Bombay, Simorgh, Dharamshala, and BISFF; Priyo Ami (2022) was awarded at the NFDC Film Bazar, Emami Art India, and was selected for IDSFFK, Busan, and IFFR.
Pauline Blanchet is a film director and producer interested in urban areas in the midst of change. She explores the perceptions and effects of external forces such as digital infrastructure, corporate regeneration programmes, and international sporting events on local inhabitants. She is particularly interested in collaborative filmmaking methodologies in research.
Kalil Haddad is an experimental filmmaker and video artist based in Toronto. His films have screened at festivals and gallery exhibitions internationally, and appear in the collections of Vtape, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative. He holds a BFA in Film Production from York University.
Terry Jones is a Haudenosaunee/Seneca filmmaker from the Seneca Nation territory in Western New York and is currently pursuing an MFA in film at York University in Toronto. Growing up on an American Indian reservation has given Terry a unique worldview. He has a passion for sharing Haudenosaunee history and culture through his works. It is his intention to engage his audiences’ five senses through his work.
Mariana Michaelis is a Brazilian filmmaker and writer from a small city in the heart of the Brazilian Midwest, Campo Grande. In 2019, she starred in the award-winning Colombian short film Sunset Without Sun (2020), and in 2021 she initiated her Bachelor’s Degree at York University. Anima Mea (2022) is Mariana’s debut short film.
Katya Shyyan is a Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker living in Vancouver. She recently completed her film education at Simon Fraser University, with a focus on writing, directing, and cinematography. Within her work she explores the hybrid usage of digital media with 16mm film and the discoveries that emerge.
Declan McKenna is an experimental animator, based in Portland, Oregon. His animations focus on materiality, queer identity, and the deconstruction of linear understandings of self.
Chaoqun Wang is a Chinese filmmaker who likes to find the root of her stories in reality, and to explore the boundaries of her creativity. Her short films have won accolades and premiered in film festivals around the world. She is currently a student of MFA Film Directing at Columbia University.
Tyisha Murphy (they/them) is a film researcher and MA candidate in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. Their practice and research interests are primarily in the access to and representation of visible minorities and queer works. They have previously been involved in projects as a student archivist in the Sexual Representation Collection at the Mark S. Bonham Centre (University of Toronto) and as part of a curatorial collective project between TMU and CFMDC (Canadian Filmmaker Distribution Centre).