Dialogue with directors Mamadou Yattassaye (Vis-à-Vis) and Christopher Harris (Speaking in Tongues: Take One)
A Refocus Film Festival shorts block, featuring five selections that expand our understanding of art and adaptation—from gorgeous stop-motion animation to intimate family stories and experimental work.
Vis-à-Vis · Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune · Inkwo For When the Starving Return · all the love i could handle · Speaking in Tongues: Take One
VIS-À-VIS
(2025, USA, 17 min.) Dir. Mamadou Yattassaye
An imperfect interrogation on irony, mortality, fragmentation, and the Western gravitational pull through the lens of a father and son. Through an adaptation of his poetry, director Mamadou Yattassaye looks at how this land alienates the parent from the child, from the individual.
ENTRE LE FEU ET LE CLAIR DE LUNE
(2025, USA, Côte d'Ivoire, 18 min.) Dir. Dominic Yarabe
A father recounts. A village reenacts. A daughter documents. An Ivorian father and his American-born daughter set out to continue the book he never finished about a war he experienced as a child. With the help of the children living in his village today, the three generations make a film together and create a mythical tapestry of entwining timelines, nightmares, and memories.
INKWO FOR WHEN THE STARVING RETURN
(2024, Canada, 18 min.) Dir. Amanda Strong
We follow the saga of Dove, a young, enigmatic, genderfluid warrior faced with external threats and internal struggles as they forge their identity while embracing the power of Inkwo and taking a stand to defend the remaining humans and animals on Earth—a mesmerizing tale of courage, identity and the enduring power of truth adapted from the short story by award-winning Tlicho Dene storyteller Richard Van Camp.
ALL THE LOVE I COULD HANDLE
(2025, USA, 14 min.) Dir. Ruby Rose Collins
Blending memory and imagination, this intimate meditation on the delicate bond between mother and child, artist and self reimagines the filmmaker’s mother’s childhood memory—an exploration of motherhood, artistry, and the unseen sacrifices that shape a legacy. Inspired by her grandmother, Kathleen Collins (Losing Ground), this film unfolds on the day she completed her seminal feature.
SPEAKING IN TONGUES: TAKE ONE
(2025, USA, 15 min.) Dir. Christopher Harris
Using found footage from Hollywood films, cartoons and documentaries, Chistopher Harris has created a 16mm film inspired by Ishmael Reed’s 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo—telling a story of resistance against the suppression of Black dance culture. Borrowing from the tradition of free jazz and avant-garde musical forms—which suggests that other "takes", or interpretations, could emerge in years to come—the film addresses the American carceral system, and Black resistance through states of ecstasy.
Still taken from all the love i could handle