Leche
Co-presented with the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT)
Early Monthly Segments is pleased to welcome back Naomi Uman, who last visited us in 2010 to present the Ukrainian Time Machine, a series of films that focused on her time spent living off the land in a small community in central rural Ukraine. Uman is in Toronto as an Artist in Residence at LIFT, where she is editing a film she shot in a tiny mountain village in Albania
Uman will present an earlier diptych, Leche (1998) and Mala Leche (2003). Leche focuses on a dairy farm family in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Uman lived with the family for a year, shooting and handprocessing the film on site to develop a documentary portrait of their daily life. Made five years later, Mala Leche follows members of the family who have migrated to California’s Central Valley. A controversial portrait of the difficulty of migration, Mala Leche was in part a catalyst for Uman’s own decision to resettle in her ancestral homeland in Ukraine just a few years later.
“By the time I was up there and living with the family, I realized I was in a situation that no one in their right mind would want to put themselves in. I had to make a movie and I had to make an honest movie. That’s where Mala Leche came from.” – Naomi Uman
Naomi Uman’s visit is made possible by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts through their Visiting Foreign Artists program.
Programme:
Leche, Naomi Uman, 1998, USA/Mexico, 16mm, 30 minutes
Mala Leche, Naomi Uman, 2003, Mexico, 16mm, 47 minutes
@ Gladstone Hotel, 2nd Floor Gallery | 1214 Queen Street West
Monday December 14, 2015 | 8:00 PM screening | $5-10 suggested donation
Mala Leche
EMS #80 = TBA