Portals
2018 | 00:15:09 min | Canada | English | Experimental Film | Colour
Portals is a four-channel film that takes an intimate look at the everyday gestures of Guyanese immigrants living in Scarborough - bowling a smooth ball in cricket, rolling a perfect roti, and playing with a traditional toy. Actions that offer reminders of home.
The film uses the genre of science-fiction to create a series of portals that rip through
time and space. By bending ideas of time/space audiences are brought to a place of
solace: in the past of a country left behind, the present experience of ‘home’ in a never-
quite-familiar new country, and expectations of future potential - safety and
prosperity. All hang together in a precarious balance.
Scarborough is home to one of the largest populations of the Guyanese diaspora in
Canada. This film acknowledges the varied experiences in this community and the
persistent tensions of living in a place that is both hostile to their ‘foreignness’, and
still the place one calls home.