ByDesign Festival 2022: Cross-Cultural Design Thinking

Show Me the Change: Short Film Program

Expired March 28, 2022 6:59 AM
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6 films in package
Colour Study
Meditative and evocative, this experimental short film organizes objects and locations by their exact colour. Writers Charles Demers, Chelene Knight and Shazia Hafiz Ramji take us on a dreamy journey through ROYGBIV, sorting memories into the spectrum.
13 Square Meters
Facing a growing immigration crisis, Berlin developed “Tempohomes,” a new design of refugee camp with an allowance of 13 square meters of space per two people. These new constructions overlooked important and distinct cultural norms among those they would house, but became reference points in a valuable conversation: Is it possible to design mass housing and emergency shelters that consider the concepts of caring and home, allowing room for cultural expression?
Moving Barcelona
One of a series of films that uses experimental dance to honor cities around the world, Moving Barcelona jostles together scenes that express the city’s relationships to progress and beauty as well as its healing scars, all of which synthesize into essential elements of its identity.
Abolishing Prisons One Garden at a Time
Artist jackie sumell’s project The Solitary Gardens develops plots of land the size of solitary confinement cells into garden beds, assigning the beds’ horticultural supervision to a “prisoner” known as a “Solitary Gardener.” Cultivation and nurture gradually cause the garden plot to outgrow its bounds, creating a profound symbolic inversion that speaks to the potential power of prison abolition and transformative justice.
One Last Ride
Against shifting backdrops of crumbling architecture, concrete structures, and freeway systems, dancers of Seattle’s Whim W’Him company pay homage to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was demolished in 2019, its 65th year.
We Do It for Awá
The Guajajara tribe, indigenous people of what is now Maranhão in Northern Brazil, are beset by industrialization and the “march of progress.” The government’s compensatory plan to build them earthen houses is an important gesture, but cannot repay the increasing challenges the tribe faces in stewarding their land and protecting remaining uncontacted tribes from their same fate.

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How do physical objects and built-environments synchronously shape and reflect the emotional spaces in which we dwell? This collection of shorts, color-coded memories, embodied explorations, and culturally-conscious rearrangements honors the stories of those seeking expression, protection, and connection.


The change is for good, you say. Show me. Show me the change.” – Moving Barcelona

Meditative and evocative, Colour Study is an experimental short film that flows dreamily, shot-by-shot, through the ROYGBIV rainbow. Set to the poetic narration of writers Charles Demers, Chelene Knight, and Shazia Hafiz Ramji, loose word associations serve as the backdrop for an ever-shifting collection of visual gems – each one possessing a different color as its focal point.


In the red to orange section, Chelene Knight retells a story of her mother cooking in the kitchen, as melting plastic Solo cups transition to a boiling pot of pasta, a spilling of a wine glass and a fire burning brightly. The yellow, green, and blue section begins with bright yellow flowers, balloons, and rubber duckies, but transitions to the yellow-green ominousness of jaundice. As Charles Demers reflects on life and death, full-fledged green speaks of sickness and nature, while blue of the sadness of loss. Colour Study closes out with the richness of indigo, violet, and red. Shazia Hafiz Ramji tenderly remembers snippets from childhood, portrayed through visuals of ice cream, pomegranates, and a mother’s flamingo-colored hijab.

  • Year
    2020
  • Runtime
    13 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    Canada
  • Director
    Anthem Jackson (Graham Kew & Daniel Code)