Siku Allooloo

SPIRIT EMULSION

7 min, 16mm-to-digital   

An Inuk/Haitian/Taíno woman’s connection to her mother in the spirit world reactivates Taíno culture and presence, revealing a realm unseen. Meanwhile, amidst a backdrop of flowers everywhere, an ancestral act of sovereignty extends into the future. Filmed on Super 8 and developed by hand with plant medicines and botanicals, Spirit Emulsion evokes a language for Taíno filmmaking in relationship to the earth and cosmos, breathing an ancestral connection into new form.

Zulaa Urchuud

ULAANBAATARAZATION

2017, 3 min, 16mm-to-digital 

In the 1970s Socialist era Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian urban mentality took shape. Originally nomads, Mongolians had to adapt to the urban livelihood and environment, thus the special kind of urban mentality was originated. This change from nomadic way of life to the urbanized life still influences Mongolian people’s mind now. As a woman, who was born and raised in Ulaanbaatar, I tried to express these feelings about the changing mentality which cannot be conveyed through words.

Lada Suomenrinne

MUN & DON (YOU & ME)

2018, 2 min, digital  

How does look the relationship between a human being and snow? You & Me is trying to portray a dialogue between two of these: snow and human. Will the snow melt by touch or would their temperature become one?

Lada Suomenrinne

Я неба (ME THE SKY)

2022, 17 min, digital

Я неба explores the landscape of the artist's Anthropocene of mind: Where the paths are taking you from under the ribs of Mother Earth, when the colonial breaths whisper into your ear– kind of landscapes are born? What kind of trees are born when you are trying to clean branches of gendered traditions while your gákti (regalia) is stuck there.

Siku Allooloo is an Inuk/Haitian/Taíno filmmaker and an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and community builder from Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada) by way of Haïti through her mother and Mittimatalik, Nunavut through her father. An artistic innovator, Siku often reimagines conventional forms as imbued by her rich cultural traditions, oral histories, and land-based practice. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally in several groundbreaking Indigenous art exhibitions (including INUA, the inaugural exhibition at Qaumajuq-Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2021-2023). Her writing has been published nationally and internationally (The Guardian, Canadian Art Magazine, Truthout, The Capilano Review, and Chatelaine). Her short film, Spirit Emulsion (2022) won Best Canadian Short Film Award at Gimli International Film Festival, Le Prix de la Relève (Emerging Talent Award) at Festival International Présence Autochtone, and Honourable Mention, DOXA Documentary Short Award.

Zulaa Urchuud, an Ulaanbaatar native, graduated from the Fine Art Institute of Mongolia with a major in graphic arts and design. She creates experimental films, and media art installations which deals with wide variety of themes. She is a board member of Mongolian Film Institute.

Lindsay McIntyre (she/her) is a filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist of Inuk and settler descent working primarily with analogue film. Her multiple award-wining short documentaries, experimental films, and expanded cinema performances are often process-based and for some, she makes her own 16mm film with handmade silver gelatin emulsion. Using experimental and handmade techniques, her short films circle themes of portraiture, place, form, and personal histories. She was named the 2021 Women in the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award winner, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton recipient for Excellence in Media Arts by the Canada Council (2013), was honoured with the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (Hnatyshyn Foundation, 2017). Her personal documentary Her Silent Life won Best Experimental Film at imagineNATIVE (2012). She has been a member of several artist-run film labs including the Double Negative Collective, EMO Collective, Iris Collective, and an international consortium of emulsioneers. Recent projects include an animated documentary for INUA at Qaumajuq, Ajjigiingiluktaaqtugut: We Are All Different (2021), which earned a special mention as one of 2021 VIFF’s Best Shorts and was nominated for Best Animation at the American Indian Film Festival; a Telus Optik Local documentary Final Roll-Out: The Story of Film (2018); an award-winning short Where We Stand (2015) about the state of analogue film in the digital age; and a monumental projection-mapping installation on the Vancouver Art Gallery, If These Walls (2019). Her short documentaries, experimental films, and expanded cinema performances have been seen around the world and can be found in several permanent collections. She is Associate Professor of Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design on unceded Coast Salish territories.

Lada Suomenrinne (1995) was born in Northern Russia and lived most of her life in the northernmost point of Finland, Sápmi, where she was adopted into a Sámi family. Her artwork takes root in cultural identity and belonging. She explores her strangeness in the landscape of heritage. Her inspiration comes from her curiosity about the borderland, where the unseen lakes of Sáminess are. Lada is having a dialogue with nature, with which she searches for a place of security as an adopted indigenous woman in the middle of the Anthropocene.