Small Pleasures

In the early 1970s, Toronto filmmaker Keith Lock moved to Buck Lake, where members of the Toronto art scene were undertaking an experiment in communal living. Lock filmed the achievements and daily rituals of his fellow communards, his camera bearing witness as a community assembled and dispersed. The resulting film uses poetic strategies, including logograms and other graphic disruptions, to extend its themes of renewal and rebirth, and to mark the encounter between reason and imagination, the concrete and the abstract. A landmark work of Canadian underground cinema, a film diary with mystic and symbolic overtones.

"This is a comedy about a boy who sweeps floors in a Chi-Com drug store and who one day meets a girl. What happens after that is humorously absurd." —Keith Lock & Jim Anderson

In a small Saskatchewan town in the 1960s, Yvette Wong, a young girl of Chinese and Cree heritage, struggles with her Indigenous identity amidst family tragedy in this coming-of-age film directed by Mohawk artist and filmmaker Shelley Niro. Yvette’s mother, Katherine, discourages her from embracing her Cree identity, so she explores it in secret. As she learns more about herself and her Indigenous heritage, Yvette finds a friend in Maggie Wolf, who embraces being part Mi’kmaq and encourages Yvette to be proud of being Cree. When her classmates learn about her Cree ancestry, Yvette encounters the realities of being Indigenous, facing prejudice with pride and holding fast to her dream of becoming a doctor. Café Daughter is inspired by true events and based on Kenneth T. Williams’ play of the same name.

"This film, done in the fine tradition of hand-painted images and sound, deals with Western man's fetish for technology." —Keith Lock & Jim Anderson

The venerated Chinese Canadian filmmaker Keith Lock narrates the story of how his mother married his father in Australia, who was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission, Operation Oblivion. This incredible story is set against the backdrop of the Second World War, a time when Chinese Canadians could not vote, swim in pools, or hire white women for their businesses.

"'Work, Bike, Eat' is about youth and being young. The intention in making the film was to catch people and the relationships between things in as natural a way as possible, and to minimize the apparent intrusion of the filming process into the subject matter. The story is really a collection of vignettes from everyday life: getting a job, eating a meal at home with your parents, chance meetings with strangers, taking a nap. A carefree camaraderie pervades the film." —Keith Lock & Jim Anderson