And other stories from Hot Docs. Catch up on this year's collection of filmmaker essays.
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Hi, Art!

Sunday, May 04, 2025

Hi, Art!

Sunday, May 04, 2025

Hi, art lovers!

 
Still from the documentary Agatha's Almanac. A woman dressed all in red holds a blue box. She stands in a leafy green yard outside two sructures with grey wooden siding.

Still from Agatha's Almanac, a film by Amalie Atkins. (Hot Docs)

 
It’s the final day of the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, so that’s a wrap on another round of Cutaways. The complete series of essays is now waiting for you on CBC Arts, and this year’s collection includes festival filmmakers Damien Eagle Bear, Elizabeth Vibert, Chase Joynt and Julietta Singh. A lot of readers were especially drawn to this piece by artist Amalie Atkins last week; in it, she shares lessons in simple, sustainable living she picked up while filming Agatha’s Almanac. (The doc follows her 90-year-old aunt, who lives alone in rural Manitoba.) 

One last note for readers in the Vancouver area: a couple of the Hot Docs titles featured in Cutaways are also appearing at the Doxa Documentary Film Festival. Aisha’s Story and #Skoden are both screening there this week. (CBC News has a preview of the latter.)
 

Because we promised you eye candy ...

 
Illustration in watercolour and ink. Depicts a field blooming with flowers. In the foreground is a reclining female figure. Save for the soles of her feet and hands, which are beige, she is completely black. Featureless like a sihouette. She wears a turban of green, blue and yellow.

Shamika Pierre

Shout-out to anyone who’s in the final stretch of the school year, and big congrats to anyone graduating. Lately, I’ve been hitting refresh on the website for OCAD University’s graduate exhibition (GradEx), which is on May 7-11 in Toronto. Have a scroll for yourself. I’ve been doing it to hype myself up for the show, which might be one of my favourite springtime events. Fun little fact for you: GradEx is the city’s biggest free exhibition of art and design. And if you plan on checking it out, look for these artists while you’re running up and down the halls … starting with illustrator Shamika Pierre. This ink and watercolour piece is called In Bloom and it features in her series, The American Dream. (Read more about it.) 
 
Illustration in shades of brown and beige. The central image is framed by a design suggesting tree branches and the phases of the moon. The central illustration is layered, as though a reflectin is being cast on a windowpane. Through it is a shadowy scene of houses in a row.

Anna Teolis

The Window by illustration grad Anna Teolis. As Anna writes on the GradEx website, it’s meant to juxtapose “the common feeling of looking out a window as connection to the outside world — as providing a sense of space or scope, with the feeling of regret and repetition, of falling back into a closed-off or isolated mindset.”
 
Abstracted landscape of tall plants growing in a river. Palette is yellow and orange and dark blue.

Supriya James

In 2023, artist Supriya James made a trip to her birth country of Guyana, and her time there inspired this painting (Roots). “It manifests my overwhelming joy and trepidation of being on and in the magical, tea-coloured waters of the Essequibo River,” she writes. (Those colours really make me feel what she’s talking about!) 
 
Three artworks of similar texture and colour are installed in a white-walled gallery. At the centre is a large sculptural piece comprised of concentric rings and fibres. It is flanked by two square framed works which also feature the same shapes and textures.

Gabriel George

There’s a sound component to this three-part sculpture by Gabriel George, so a visit to experience it IRL at GradEx is definitely in order. The installation references Theyyam (a ritual performed in northern Kerala, India), which combines multiple art forms, including dance, theatre and music. Gabriel shares more about the concept here.
 
Oil painting of a girl in a patterned T-shirt and magenta veil smoking a cigarette. Her hand is disproportionately large, slightly bigger than her face. She looks at the viewer. The background is black.

Lydia Roy

I’m no fan of cigarettes, but this is a Smoke Break I can get behind. Lydia Roy is the artist. The oil painting is part of her thesis project, What It Means to Be Brave.
 
 

You've got to see this

 
 
 
A black and white photo of a woman with a short afro is surrounded by full-blossomed white roses.
Doxa Documentary Film Festival

In the ‘60s, Canadians watched her on CBC. Today, she’s trending on TikTok

 
Re-introducing Judi Singh. A new documentary puts the Edmonton musician back in the spotlight.
 
A woman stands on a sailboat. She is seen in profile, looking over her shoulder.
Micro_scope, NFB, Urban Factory

Her father died in a shipwreck. Her brother vanished at sea

 
But there’s an even bigger mystery at the heart of this new doc.
 
In a large industrial room, six air compressors are connected by hoses to arrangements of organ pipes installed in clusters around the space.

William Sabourin

 

It's a scream

 
Maggy Hamel-Metsos makes conceptual art that will shake your bones.
 

Follow this artist

 
 
 
Instagram

Evelyn Tan

@o3oeve
Mixed media illustration of the CBC Arts logo. Pastel colour palette. The illustration depicts a spring landscape with cartoon-like daisies, mountains and plump raindrops and clouds. A caterpillar looms large at the bottom of the composition. A CBC gem logo appears at centre, made up of glossy segments suggesting a rain puddle. Text reads CBC Arts.

Evelyn Tan

May is Asian Heritage Month, which got Evelyn thinking about her Chinese Canadian background and how it informs her connection to nature. That’s one of the ideas she brought to the table when designing this version of the CBC Arts logo, and you can learn more about the concept — and Evelyn! — in this Q&A.
 

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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time!

 
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