Dive into the wild and unpredictable currents of contemporary cinema. This series of short experimental films showcases local artists who bend form, fracture narrative, and push the boundaries of image and sound to create bold, thought-provoking works that ripple far beyond the screen.
TOTAL PIXEL SPACE
Jacob Adler | USA | 2025 | 9m
Total Pixel Space contains every possible digital image, including films of your entire life, every life you never lived, and the lives of every creature or object that ever and never existed on or off the earth, from every possible angle.
Jacob Adler is a composer, performer, and teacher.
He has released 6 albums of music, and he performs on the piano, organ, laptop, accordion, tanpura, and tsimbl in several ensembles specializing in early music, contemporary classical, Hindustani, free jazz, and klezmer. He has performed his compositions at Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Amsterdam, Musica Moderna festival in Łódź, Göteborg International Organ Festival in Sweden, the Issue Project Room in New York, and other festivals in Europe and the U.S.
ACCUMULATION
Daniel Pacella | 2024 | 5m
Using video and sound this short film explores human memory and considers what stays with us as we age.
This is Daniel Pacella's first film. He is currently pursuing an arts education at Brock University.
CHERISH THE ONES IN THE BETWEEN
Bawaadan Collective | 2024 | 4m
Created as part of Saugeen Takes On Film, this piece marks a collaborative process between filmmakers Chris Harrison, Adrian Kahgee, Yuma Hester, and Derek Jenkins. Shot on both Digital and Analogue format, this piece works to explore the spaces between generations, formats, knowledge, this life and the next.
Bawaadan Collective is a group of Indigenous artisans and accomplices dedicated to fostering collaboration in modern artistic, storytelling, and film production processes.
GRAPEFRUIT
Skye Rogers | 2021 | 4m
grapefruit is largely inspired by conceptual and Fluxus artist, Yoko Ono, who published an instructional poem book by the same name. The short film is an invitation to slow down; to engage deeply with the present, to pause and gaze, and notice the tiny, beautiful details of the world, including the people among you, doing the same. It was shot on a Sony Handycam digital video camcorder at different locations around Downtown St. Catharines and the Fitzgerald neighbourhood.
Skye Rogers (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate performing artist based in Attiwandaronia (Hamilton, Ontario) and St. Catharines. Dearly devoted to making spaces for people to feel at home, Skye explores her relationship to place, body, and community, through choreography, workshop facilitation, devised theatre creation, film creation, and performance. Skye is the co-Artistic Director of retrograde: dance in motion and Tapestry Theatre Collective, and is an Artistic Associate with Aeris Körper. She is an alumni of the RBC Apprenticeship with Musical Stage Co. in (Choreography, 2023-24), Brock University (Arts Leadership, 2022) and Randolph College for the Performing Arts (Triple Threat, 2019).
INDEX POEMS
Andrew Finlay Stewart | 2025 | 5m
Index Poems is a film combining the music and poetry of Del Stephen with imagery shot on 16mm film while exploring the Niagara region. The poems come from Del Stephen’s INDEX POEMS, a collection of painstakingly found poetry compiled from the backs of various books over several months and reappropriated in a new light. These poems are intertwined with the found poetry of local urban and natural environments, evocative moments and compositions captured on high-contrast black and white film with the NAC’s Bolex camera.
Andrew Finlay Stewart is an artist and musician from the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. He holds a BFA from OCAD University and has shown nationally and internationally, and curated art with the Artists’ Newsstand and Long Winter Toronto. He performs music with Red Trillium, the Garden City Stringband, and a project with Del Stephen called Key Cut. He also hosts a podcast/art project called The Rules of the Show, available wherever you get your podcasts. His video art is distributed by Vtape.
Del Stephen is an exploratory artist, researcher, and listener. It was midway through his studies in Applied Linguistics at Brock University that he gained a heightened interest and sensitivity to the ways that language and poetry interact in the world. His poetry practice today sees him writing, recording, and finding poems, which he then often further develops for live performance via spoken word and experimental collaging (i.e. sonic poetry). He has released nearly 40 albums to date, typically made available in limited and handmade editions, and all of which seek to represent and document his ongoing creative actions. Over the past decade, Del Stephen has been presented at concert series and festivals in Canada, Europe, and the UK. He continues to make music both independently and as a part of various ongoing group efforts. These days, he organizes and attends shows in Toronto. In 2012, he co-founded the band Think Of A Name in downtown St. Catharines.
RADIANTLY ALIVE
Rachelle Wunderink | 2024 | 2m
In Radiantly Alive, Wunderink creates a single experimental video collage that magnifies the repetitive, often overlooked aspects of child-rearing into a horrific vignette, reflecting the quiet yet unrelenting rhythm of caregiving. She manipulates a 1950s Purcell shampoo commercial, layering and abstracting the original material to evoke a haunting sense of vertigo. This effect mirrors the cyclical, sometimes overwhelming nature of motherhood, emphasizing the mental exhaustion inherent in the daily tasks of feeding, cleaning, and comforting.
Rachelle Wunderink is an interdisciplinary settler artist currently based in the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee of “Onguiaahra” or Niagara Falls, Canada. She recently finished her Masters of Fine Arts at York University, where she was awarded The Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, (SSHRC) for her thesis exhibition. Over the past 10 years she has co-founded two separate artist collectives working mostly abroad in Taipei, Taiwan and Grand Rapids, Michigan. She recently had two solo exhibitions at IA&A Hillyer in Washington D.C (2025), and Eastern Edge Artist-Run Centre in St.Johns (2025), and was featured in the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art’s Jump- Off exhibition, and Young Art’s Taipei with Archetype Gallery. Rachelle is a proud mother of a two year old and a newborn, and can be found in her studio listening to podcasts such as Normal Gossip, or This American Life.
SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST
Gianni Baha | 2025 | 5m
South by Southeast is an edit of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 film "North by Northwest,” using only scenes with people of colour. The end result reveals how people of colour were limited to service roles that relied on stereotypes of the American South and Southeast, despite the opening card affirming that any characters’ similarity to actual persons is purely coincidental. People of colour’s presence - or lack of - is more noticeable with the vibrant technicolor, which works against it’s initial intention, highlighting background actors instead of the stars. As messengers and carriers constantly aiding the story, it begs the question, how far would the protagonist get on their own if these scenes were removed?
Gianni Baha is a screenwriter and filmmaker. He studied film at Western University (Canada) SciencesPo. (France) and European Film College (Denmark). He was an artist in residence at Fabrica (Italy) and KesselsKramer (Netherlands). Shorts include "For a Brown Guy" and "I Love You, I Love You" (Official Premiere: Short of the Week).
TAKING THE PISS
Christina Dovolis & Tavis Putnam | 2024 | 4m
Despite their pervading image as a bastion of utter grotesqueness, public bathrooms are a necessary community space. In theory, at least, they are a place for everyone.
This film celebrates—in equal measure—the shared horror, refuge (and dare we say ecstasy?) of the public bathroom.
Christina Dovolis is an interdisciplinary filmmaker and urban designer, working with cutting-edge technologies to explore how our built environments shape community and identity. Hailing from the Midwest, Christina draws inspiration from themes of girlhood and gossip, religious mythologies, and the complexities of urban development. As an educator, Christina is committed to making new media programs more accessible to the public, particularly focusing on empowering women and marginalized groups. She has achieved acclaim for her projects, with presentations at the Museum of the Moving Image, InterAccess Gallery, Nuit Blanche, Calgary Underground Film Festival, and more.
Tavis Putnam is a filmmaker, writer, and performer from Treaty 1 Territory: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Exploring the squirmy middle ground between comedy and tragedy, his projects have screened at the Calgary Underground Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and on the Brooklyn-based platform NoBudge. His debut feature A Social was voted “Favourite Film by a Local Filmmaker” by readers of The University of Winnipeg newspaper The Uniter, and played to sold out crowds at the Dave Barber Cinematheque in 2022. He holds a Master's of Fine Arts in Film Production from Toronto's York University.
THE BODY
Davy Walker & Jackie Turpin | 2025 | 4m
Intimacy on display. My skin pressed. Pooling between plates of touch screen glass, video blue with anticipation. The body surveilled, the body yearned for, the body paid for. Endless loops of films of tapes of the endless present of the endless scroll. Our endless role flayed agape for all to see in 4k's and traced rays.
Davy Walker is a Niagara Falls–based musician and filmmaker from Los Angeles. They hold a degree from SAIC in Chicago. Their work blends experimental fiction and nonfiction, using sound collage to explore queer identity, religious rehabilitation, and pop culture: their film, little fears, screened at the 2022 MNFF. Jackie Turpin is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist, filmmaker, and designer. Blending experimental digital methods with traditional animation, she explores identity, media history, and pop culture. Her vibrant, dreamlike work has shown at LACMA, Slamdance, Ottawa International Animation Festival, K Museum Seoul, and more. She holds degrees from CalArts and UCLA.
THIS IS MY FACE
Tara Natalia | 2024 | 6m
Trapped at an ornate vanity mirror, a young woman spirals into madness while attempting to conceal severe acne. This Is My Face uses a combination of digital footage, Super 8mm, scratch film, and film painting to explore the act of concealment, what we hide from others and fail to hide from ourselves.
Tara Natalia is a Toronto-based filmmaker and producer. Her artistic practice explores telling dramatic stories through experimental analog film processes. Her most recent project, This Is My Face, tells the story of a woman struggling to conceal her severe adult acne using a combination of digital footage, Super 8mm, scratch film, and film painting.