In The Body's Wake
Death of the Monarch
Monae KyharaDeath of the Monarch is a documentary short on the stages of grief after the loss of the family matriarch. Through African American dance and cinema, the artist explores healing as nonlinear.
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In The Body's Wake interprets the theme of (g)hosts as it takes place in and through the body. Here “wake” takes on the meaning of both a vigil and “that which follows,” as in: in the wake of (a reckoning, a death, a boat’s passage).
This program focuses on the body as the host of memory, and insofar as memory is something already past, these films deal variously with a spectrum of loss. (What is a ghost if not the presence of something or someone once held dear?) These films may be haunted by lost selves (or potential ones), but at the same time they seem to hunt for that space of disturbed flow—the wake of water or air or life pushed aside by something more solid—now unveiled.
In these films, a ghostly presence is largely embodied in flesh, but sometimes the ghost of memory is large enough to preside over a whole landscape. A ghost is a fearsome and beautiful thing, lurking beyond belief, but filmmakers Monae Sims, Direk Jom, Filémon Brault Archambeault, Dominique De Groen, Ruby Reding, Hao Zhou, and Brahim Tall invite us to be vulnerable enough to see the ghosts that they have put before their audience, to feel them as alive and present.
Monae Kyhara is a newly emerging creative focused on an introspective style of multimedia filmmaking and cinematography. Having the opportunity to screen films at a variety of Texas establishments, such as BlueStar, Slab Cinema, and Mixology with Undiscovered Works, the UTSA graduate is hunting for the next opportunity for connection and improvement as she moves on to Syracuse University to complete her MFA studies in Film and Media Arts.
Jomilee Lynch Gerardo (she/they) is a multifaceted artist based in Toronto. She is passionate about visual storytelling that questions the stories of familial, romantic, and platonic relationships through the perspectives of female, queer, mental wellness, and immigrant identities.
Filémon Brault-Archambeault is a multidisciplinary video artist whose work brings together visual arts, poetry, music, and cinema. Their work celebrates the ambiguity of queer existence as a way to question gendered structures of power. They are currently studying filmmaking at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Tiothia:ke/Montréal.
Dominique De Groen is a Belgian writer and artist. She has published four volumes of poetry, as well as fiction and essays. In her visual work, she remixes filmed images, found footage, and animation to explore themes such as ecology, popular and internet culture, and late-capitalist experience and affectivity.
Ruby Reding is an artist living in London. Through a gappy filmmaking and writing practice, her works consider the effects and histories of land enclosures, alongside a close attention to the textures of language, speculative fictions, and ecology. She has an MA in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London and recently completed the alternative studio programme Conditions. Her works have been shown internationally.
Hao Zhou is a filmmaker from southwest China, focusing on queer films with experimental leanings. Zhou’s past work includes the narrative feature The Night (2014), experimental documentary Frozen Out (2021), and short doc Here, Hopefully (2023).
Brahim Tall is an artist with Belgian, Senegalese, and Dutch roots. In 2017 he started studying photography at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, where he built the foundation of his practice: working mainly around identity and representation. In 2022 he graduated with his latest project, Tukuleur, which won a VAF Wildcard.
Nora Rosenthal is a writer and filmmaker. She is presently in the final year of her MFA at York University, studying film production as an Ontario Graduate Scholar. Nora was selected for the 2022 Talent Lab at the Montreal International Documentary Festival, and is one of the artists in this year’s RBC Emerging Artist Network at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Momus, MUBI’s Notebook, and The Editorial Magazine.