Incantations – 2023

Friday, April 14, 3:00 PM

Heron 1954 – 2002
Director: Alexis McCrimmon, Experimental, USA, 4 min
A visual eulogy that taps into the phenomena of makeshift memorials and small gestures of mourning. Honoring the life of a loved one who died due to an accidental opioid overdose, the film materializes the process of overdue bereavement by invoking a fragmented presence at the periphery of the mind.

Grave Scanner
Director: Mahsaa Talebiani, Experimental, USA, 5 min
I can’t talk to graves but I can play with them and hear them talking.

When We Arrive As Flowers
Director: Susan O’Brien, Experimental, USA, 5 min
Diovanna, a dancer realizes her transfemme identity through a choreographic journey of self-discovery, celebration, and the poetic metaphor of a flower coming to bloom.

Flowers
Director: Dumas Haddad, Experimental, UK, 8 min
A young prince embarks on a potent journey of self-discovery to claim and earn his crown.

Dawta
Director: Jessica Ashman, Animation, UK, 7 min
Dawta has a power she is unaware of, until she is propelled through time and space to a utopian planet. Inspired by family history of trans-racial fostering and concepts of inherited trauma, Dawta is a story of escaping the past through the imagining of an unknown future, an unknown hope.

Nail Clippings: World Without Sun
Director: Artemis Evlogimenou, Experimental, Cyprus, 9 min
Loneliness is explored via our detachment from nature and self-imposed situations which, in theory, are easy to break away from.

To Heaven
Director: Logan L Burroughs, Documentary, USA, 11 min
This work compiles documented moments lived by Black folks in the South, providing a taste of being uninhibited, free, and liberated while considering what could be if that was all that existed. The film also presents spiritual practices that look to transform fantasy into a consistent reality.

Ixtlahuacán
Director: Augusto de Alba, Narrative, Spain, 12 min
Under the wheel of time in a distant planet, In Lak’ech longs to return home. The search for his way back will bring him an unexpected revelation and an unusual encounter with the deepest secrets of creation.

Daughter of the Sea
Director: Alexis C Garcia, Narrative, Puerto Rico, 19 min
After the death of her grandfather, a young woman experiences a spiritual awakening when she is called by Yemaya, the orisha Goddess of the Sea.

Can We Not Be So Self-Centered and Keep Our Experiences to Ourselves? Diasporic Remembrances of Fasia Jansen
Director: Aline Benecke, Experimental, Germany, 21 min
We gathered to remember the Black German Activist Fasia Jansen. Fasia was born in 1929 in Hamburg as the illegimate daughter of a White German Eli Jansen and Liberian Consul Momolu Massaquoi. Having had to witness the suffering of Jewish women in the Camp of Neuegamme, where Fasia herself was subjected to forced labour, Fasia dedicated her adult life to different political struggles. Fasia Jansen was active in women-, labour-, anti-atomic- and peace movements. Her contribution to these movements is an impressive collection of protest songs.