Collaborators
JUNO winner Shanto Acharia has been an important part of Vancouver’s music community since 1997. A student of acclaimed Canadian cellist/composer Peggy Lee and graduate of the school of legendary Vancouver venue, The Sugar Refinery, the cellist, bassist, and composer has performed at festivals across Canada, including Suoni Per Il Poppolo, and Le Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. A member of Fond of Tigers since 2006, he has also collaborated with dance artists such as Jennifer Mascall,, theatre groups Alley Theatre, Section 8, and Rumble Productions, as well as Giorgio Magnanensi. Recent ensemble projects include Gentle Party, Parkland, and Limbs of the Stars
Laura Barrón is a photo- and video-based artist and arts educator. Her photographs, video art, installations, and art-books have been exhibited in various countries, including Mexico, Canada, the United States, Japan, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Laura was born in Mexico City. She moved to Canada in 2003. Laura is part of the SNCA (National System of Art Creators) by FONCA-CONACULTA Mexico. Learn more at http://www.laurabarron.ca
Lucía Bedoya is a film and theater actress. She graduated with a degree in dramatic art from the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. She received the Best Actress award at the Venezuela Film Festival and at Santo Domingo’s Outfest Festival for her performance in Yo Imposible (2018). In 2020, she participated in the 48 Hours Colombia competition, where she was awarded Best Director. Lucía is also a dancer of flamenco, salsa, and contemporary dance. Her latest film, Memento Mori (2023), is currently touring festivals around the world. Learn more at https://www.instagram.com/luciab.73/
Our subtle perception antennae have become dull, overshadowed. Nature lulls us in her bosom… Her Visual: Sensual: Instinctual offerings always a-present. From the primal plasma, the frequency-com-matter, 13.8 billion years ago, now us: pondering, conscious, receptive, gift-bathed; needy and lost. Born in Mexico City in 1968, Jaime Carral strives to share findings from these glimpses, weaving expression balms as purposed medicine with still and moving photography as partial mediums. Jaime’s onset was in the 80s… a Nikon F2, frothing from there: becoming intent and focused through courses, workshops, and internships with Saul Serrano & Gabriel Figueroa. FONCA Mexico Residency in Banff Centre for the Arts and work in Ottawa School of Arts. Exhibits in Centro Libre de Arte, Mexico; Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City); Ecomusée de Hull (Hull, QC), Centro de Fotografía Artísitca (Mexico), ESECA UNAM (Ottawa-Gatineau); Gallery of the Grotesque (Mexico City); Galerie LUZ (Montreal, QC). Selected/published in Kyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (K*MoPA) Young Portfolio Acquisitions, Japan and in Umbral XXI Postgraduate Magazine of Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City).
Burak Çevik founded Fol Cinema Society and curated experimental and arthouse film screenings. He was lecturer on Non-Fiction between 2018-2020 at Istanbul Bilgi University. His films The Pillar of Salt (2018), Belonging (2019), and Forms of Forgetting (2023) premiered at Berlin Forum. His video works have screened at festivals such as Locarno Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, FID Marseille, and New York Film Festival. Learn more at https://burakcevik.com
Alejandro Coronado is a resourceful and creative storyteller with a background in video art and seventeen years of experience as a professional cinematographer. He was born in Mexico City and graduated from York University’s BFA (’05) and MFA (’20) in film and video. His credits as cinematographer include Mis Dos Voces, directed by Lina Rodriguez (Berlin Int. Film Festival, ‘22), Ever Deadly, directed by Chelsea McMullan (NFB,’22), and Summer of Goliath, directed by Nicolás Pereda (Orizzonti Prize at Venice Film Festival, ‘10). Learn more at https://mubi.com/cast/alejandro-coronado and https://www.instagram.com/elalexcoronado/.
Tasha Faye Evans is a dancer, theatre artist, creative consultant, cultural programmer, and educator from Coast Salish, Welsh, and European Jewish grandparents. Her work is an integration of dance, theatre, and culture driven by the sacred responsibility to care for the future of all our relations. Her current personal projects include Cedar Woman, a dance honouring a legacy of Coast Salish women spanning all the way back to a tree in the Great Flood, and In the Presence of Ancestors, a life-long exhibition of five Coast Salish House posts being carved and raised in Port Moody. Tasha has participated in performances and festivals nationally and internationally, such as the International Women’s Festival of Art in Colombia, Coastal Dance Festival, International Sacred Water Festival, DIV, and the 2023 Adaka Festival. Tasha’s most memorable performance was dancing Starr Murranko’s Spine of the Mother at the Museum of Anthropology. Learn more at https://tashafayeevans.com
A filmmaker of 20 years, but a storyteller for many more, Alysha Galbreath is a dabbler of many kinds. Making, writing, music, acting, on stage or off, she has found herself happily in life behind the camera. A cinematographer working in documentary and narrative formats, each keep her close to what she feels is the point of it all - finding truths in each story that connect us to each other. Some of her work includes Cheating Hitler (2019), The Fabulous Show with Fay and Fluffy (2022, 2025), and Dream It To be It (2023). Learn more at https://www.alyshagalbreath.com
Steven Hill, a descendent of irish and scottish settlers, is an artist, teacher, and father who makes performances on the traditional and ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people. He has been making theatre for over 30 years as a performer, dramaturg, deviser, and director. He is Co-Artistic Director of Leaky Heaven Performance (https://leakyheaven.com), where he works with artists from a wide variety of disciplines creating site-specific and experimental performances following an interest in queer, post-human, and post-dramatic thought. Most recently he directed the community engaged project Dream Machine with ten artists and children from RayCam Community Centre and appeared in We Are Family, a new film directed by Marie Clements. He is currently working on Slip Slap Trip Whack, a Social Practice Installation to be performed in Summer 2024. He is president of the board of the Russian Hall, a performance venue and community hall in East Vancouver. From 2007- 2022 he was an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Arts, where he taught devising, directing, acting, and performance theory.
Anna Maguire is British/Canadian artist working in film, photography, writing, and performance. Her photobook Everything is OK exhibited in the Photobook Show at the TIP Institute of Photography in Tokyo. Her films as director have won awards at London Short Film Festival and Thessaloniki International Short Film Festival. Your Mother and I (2016) was nominated for Best Short Film at the London Critics’ Circle Awards. The London Short Film Festival held a retrospective of her short film and acting work in 2022. Her acting credits include Love and a Major Organ (2023), Violation (2020), The Hummingbird Project (2018), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). She is an associate lecturer in Screenwriting at Birkbeck University, London, and is an ongoing mentor for the BFI Future Film Academy. She has also worked as a filmmaking tutor with Spectrum Productions in Montreal, which supports youth on the autism spectrum, and took part as a mentor in the first Stage21 acting workshops for youth with Down Syndrome in partnership with BAFTA and The Arts Council, UK in 2023. Learn more at http://annamaguire.co.uk
A restless cinematic adventurer, Peter Mettler’s work is characterized by hybridism, a sense of wonder, unusual forms of collaboration, and a disregard for classification. Frequently visiting themes of transcendence and the delicate relationship between technology and the natural world, Mettler’s work combines travelogue, essay, interview, fiction, and critique. They are guided by instinct yet grounded in discipline, structure, craft, and a knack for apprehending stunning images and great stories. His films include Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), and The End of Time (2012). Learn more at https://www.petermettler.com
Snežana Pešić is an award-winning scenographer, multi-disciplinary artist, and educator. In Canada, she has collaborated with companies such as Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, Crow’s Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, Against the Grain, Ghost River, Obsidian, Volcano and Native Earth, among others. Internationally, her designs have toured in the USA, Norway, and Serbia, and presented at numerous international exhibitions, such as the Prague Quadrennial (2007, 2015), World Stage Design (2009, Seoul; 2013, Cardiff), Innovative Costume of 21st Century; Next Generation and Costume at the Turn of the Century (Moscow, 2019 and 2015), and World’s Stage Costume (2022, Mexico City) and Critical Costume (Los Angeles,2024). In 2019, Snežana designed and curated the Canadian Professional Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ). Pešić is the recipient of the Betty Mitchell Award for outstanding lighting design, a Prix Rideau Award nominee, and was shortlisted for the Pauline McGibbon Award for emerging theatre artists. She is a professor of performance design at the University of Toronto. Learn more at https://www.snezanapesic.com
Paul Rigby has performed and toured with artists such as Garth Hudson, Los Lobos, T-Bone Burnett, Jakob Dylan, Matt Andersen, Crystal Bowersox, Jackie Greene, Jesse Zubot, Carolyn Mark, and Neko Case. Rigby co-wrote and arranged Case’s albums Middle Cyclone, The Worst Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, and Hell On. Rigby also co-wrote, with Case, the music for Callie Khouri & Trip Cullman’s Broadway adaptation of Thelma and Louise. Alongside Stephen Lyons and Shanto Acharia, Rigby is a member of the Vancouver post-rock outfit Limbs of the Stars.
Luz Ruciello studied image and sound design at the University of Buenos Aires. Un Cine en Concreto (2017), her first feature documentary, was selected by more than 30 international festivals after premiering at the 34th Miami Film Festival. It was the opening night film of the 21st Lima International Film Festival (PUCP) and won the audience award at the 11th Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam. She directed the short films Seis Horas Así (2001), Madreselva (2015), co-directed with Lluís Miras Vega, and La Creciente (2016). Her latest work, Ezlekua (2020) co-directed with Marta Romero Coll, was also selected for several festivals. She currently works as director of street casting in Barcelona, while developing the script Pista de Baile for director Marta Romero. Learn more at https://vimeo.com/litoralcine