Filmi 21!
Filmi Toronto’s South Asian Film Festival Celebrating 21 Years!
December 9th-10th, 2023
21st Filmi: Toronto’s South Asian film festival
Harbourfront Centre
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A pioneering exploration of the #MeToo movement unfolds as an experimental meditation, intertwining dance and spoken word. This unique perspective emanates from a woman of colour, offering a distinctive lens on the profound narrative.
Director Biography – Suri Parmar
Suri Parmar (she/they), a filmmaker and professor based in Toronto, is a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Writers’ Lab and the Stonecoast MFA Program. Having earned recognition through esteemed international artist residencies like RIFF Talent Lab, Suri has honed her craft under the guidance of filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Anne Carey. In her role as a studio producer and coordinator of branded content, she contributed to projects such as Season 2 of Futurists, a Yahoo In The Know docu-series, behind-the-scenes videos, and live holographic event activations for New York Fashion Week 2022, along with XR media for Yahoo Entertainment. Suri’s impactful short films have graced the screens of the Canadian Film Fest, Kansas International Film Festival, and Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Director Statement
I conceived You’re Smart as a tribute to the many brave individuals who kickstarted the #MeToo movement to combat sexual harassment and abuse in the entertainment industry. Who -unfortunately – continue to face skepticism and hostility. Times and perspectives are shifting but victims still must fulfil a narrow, outdated, and misogynistic metric to be taken seriously.
Their stories are rarely straightforward. Predators often cultivate grey areas to cast doubt on their targets. Women of colour in particular are already fetishized and stereotyped as “angry” and “troublemaking” and may not come forward to avoid further abuse. In response to #MeToo, industry power players have proposed performative one-size-fits-all gestures – catered to the nonexistent “perfect victim” archetype – that allow perpetrators to flourish.
I hope that You’re Smart adds nuance to this ongoing dialogue. It features a visible minority performer who relates a hypothetical predatory encounter through movement and spoken word. It takes place in an outdoor theatre to imply that her pain as an “imperfect” victim is treated as a spectacle. The pretty and manicured park backdrop shows that horrific incidents brazenly occur in pleasant, everyday life.
The performer expresses how the world sees her as “smart” and a “feminist” and not someone who could be groomed and victimized. In the end, she’s alone, an incidental murmur in an ongoing maelstrom of power and privilege
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