Image: A Magical Substance Flows Into Me (2015) by Jumana Manna
Reciprocal Relations
We're thrilled to announce the participants for our ongoing Reciprocal Relations programme!
Responding to our Call for Emerging Artists from last fall, selected applicants were each paired with an established artist from CFMDC’s membership to collaborate in the creation and delivery of a public program. The CFMDC mentoring artists include: TJ Cuthand, Nadine Valcin, Francisca Duran, Chris Chong Chan Fui and Sharlene Bamboat. Each paired artist duo researched and developed their projects through the winter and spring of 2023. Their collaborations may be presented online or in-person, depending on the location of the artists, and has taken the form of screenings, installations, and other presentation formats. Each emerging artist was paid $2000 for participating in the collaboration, program creation and delivery.
Omolola Ajao
Paired with Nadine Valcin
Omolola Ajao is a Nigerian-Canadian filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist.
Her documents ruminate on Black migratory life, scripting from observation, meditation and personal introspection. She embraces Black reality as means of endless imagination, exploration and excavation. Often playing within introjection to speculate upon migratory presence. She has screened internationally at Miami Film Festival, Urbanworld, TIFF Next Wave, and is a 2021-22 TIFF Fellow, Union Docs Fellow and Hot Docs Fellow.
Nada El-Omari
Paired with Francisca Duran
Nada El-Omari is a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montréal, Québec. She has centered her practice and research interests on the intergenerational transmissions of memories, displacement and the stories of belonging and identity through a poetic, hybrid lens. Focusing on process and fragments in text, sound and image, Nada explores different ways to self-narrate new ways to speak hybridity and self. El-Omari holds a BFA in Film Production and MFA in Film from York University.
KJ Edwards
Paired with TJ Cuthand
KJ Edwards is a Kanien’kehá:ka and mixed settler filmmaker. Her family is from Kahnawá:ke and Longueuil, Quebec; while she was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory, Edmonton, Alberta. Holding a BFA in Film Production from the Toronto Metropolitan University, KJ is trained in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques. She wrote and directed Meet The Sky (2021), a short dramatic film that is still making festival rounds. She is currently focusing on eco processing analogue film, and activating dreams and memories to create content for her MFA thesis at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, which is located on unceded traditional Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Territory in Vancouver.
Athina Khalid
Paired with Sharlene Bamboat
Athina Khalid is a part-time writer, filmmaker, and editor, currently pursuing her Master’s in History at McGill University. Her work often engages with questions of history, memory, and archive. As part of the CFMDC's Reciprocal Relations program, she curated a film screening IN ITS PLACE wtih Sharlene Bamboat, which took place this spring.
Mackai Sharp
Paired with Chris Chong Chan Fui
Mackai Sharp is a Queer Maōri-Canadian Filmmaker, Creative Dir, and Multimedia Artist. Raised on Vancouver island (on unceded K’omoks territory), Mackai has been filmmaking and creating since he was 8 years old, often fostering and researching his own arts education as no formal programs would accept him to study due to his early age.
Mackai likes to confront his problems head on, using his preferred digital mediums as a space to tear apart existential ideas of self, community, interpersonal relationships and lived experiences. With these pieces, he makes work that tells a story he couldn’t put into words.
His work has been shown across North America, Europe & Asia. Adjacent to filmmaking, Mackai is a published photographer working in both creative and journalistic photography. His intentions are to continue making art, films & friends; exploring new mediums and expanding his practice abroad.