The Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF) has announced the entire lineup for their 36th annual Festival, which will take place across Vancouver from September 11-22, 2024 this year. The program includes international film and episodic content authored by 2SLGBTQIA+ creators, centered on 2SLGBTQIA+ protagonists, and celebrating queer storytelling and joy. The Festival includes parties, performances, … Read more
BlackStar Projects, the premier organization celebrating visionary Black, Brown and Indigenous film and media artists, is thrilled to announce the selections for the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival. This year’s festival will take place from August 1-4, 2024 at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, with additional screenings, parties and events at various venues across … Read more
BY PAT MULLEN POV Magazine A Mother Apart topped the winners at this year’s Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival. The documentary directed by Laurie Townshend and produced by OYA Media and the National Film Board of Canadian scored three prizes at the festival: Best Canadian Feature, Best First Feature, and the Audience Award for Documentary. The … Read more
By John Corrado, The Joy of Movies The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The documentary A Mother Apart (which was one of the finalists for the Hot Docs Audience Award) offers a candid portrait … Read more
by Vickie, movie pie™ A Mother Apart (7/8) Director Laurie Townshend crafts a beautifully poetic examination of the mother/daughter relationship — and all the complexities, contrasts, and conflicting emotions that can arise therein — with this doc chronicling Staceyann Chin’s journey to reconcile her troubled past with her mother. A poet, performer and activist, Chin was … Read more
by The Caribbean Camera Inc. The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is presenting a stellar selection of seven National Film Board of Canada (NFB) produced and co-produced documentaries, including two world premieres, from April 25 to May 5 in Toronto. Charles Officer Among them is the world premiere of A Mother Apart by Oya Media Group and the NFB … Read more
by Susan Cole, Point of View Magazine A Mother Apart (Canada, 89 min.) Dir. Laurie Townshend Programme: Persister This extraordinary portrait of a woman haunted and scarred by abandonment turns into a tale of real strength and joy. That’s because as poet and activist Staceyann Chin searches for her mother, we experience the writer’s wondrous … Read more
by Steve Kopian, Unseen Films Portrait of Jamaican-American artist, performer poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin,who has been struggling with the notion of how to be a good mother. It’s a struggle that she has been wrestling with she was abandoned by her own mother decades before. While I know that this is a great … Read more
by Sean Patrick Kelly, SkonMovies.com. 3.5 / 5 LGBTQ poet Staceyann Chin has spent decades trying to reconcile the abandonment by her mother in A Mother Apart. When Staceyann Chin was a 9-year-old in Jamaica, her mother Hazel for a new life in Montreal. Now a lesbian beat poet, Staceyann is still trying to cope with … Read more
by Andrew Parker, The Gate A loving and progressively minded mother looks back on her fraught relationship to her own distant maternal figure in director Laurie Townshend’s enlightening, heartfelt, and empathetic A Mother Apart. Jamaican-American poet, activist, and playwright Staceyann Chin has spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on the role her absentee mother, Hazel, had … Read more
NFB director of programming, distribution and marketing Anne-Claire Lefaivre speaks about NFB’s Hot Docs film roster: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/dans-la-mosaique/episodes/753205/rattrapage-jeudi-25-avril-2024/8 Youtuber Carolyn Hinds interview with Director Laurie Townshend A Mother Apart – Interview with Filmmaker Laurie Townshend for Hot Doc 2024, Carolyn Talks Podcast Podcast: Hot Docs 2024 – Carolyn Talks ‘A Mother Apart’ with Filmmaker Laurie Townshend … Read more
by Paolo Kagaoan In The Seats 3 / 5 Many people, I assume, live many lifetimes in one, but that is especially true about poet and mother Staceyann Chin. As a university student in Kingston, Jamaica, she experienced intimidation that targets her as a 2SLGBT+ woman. After that harrowing experience, she moved to New … Read more
ISABELLA SOARES, SHE DOES THE CITY A Mother Apart Staceyann Chin wears many hats, from being a talented poet to a self-proclaimed activist. Yet, a lot of her work is a product of her growing up with an absent mother. As she opens the letters she wrote to her mom as a child, Staceyann rehashes some … Read more
by Lucius Dechausay, CBC Arts I first heard about this film in 2018, when filmmaker Laurie Townshend was developing the project for Toronto’s Oya Media Group. At the time, she was following the lives of four women whose activism informed their approach to motherhood. These were mothers on the front lines of radical change who deeply understood the … Read more
