Toronto – Four award-winning National Film Board of Canada (NFB) produced and co-produced documentaries will be featured at DOC NYC in New York City, from November 13 to December 1, 2024.
America’s largest documentary film festival, DOC NYC will host the NYC premieres of two NFB co-produced feature docs:
- A Mother Apart (Oya Media Group/NFB) by Laurie Townshend accompaniesBrooklyn-based Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin as she re-imagines the essential art of mothering—having been abandoned by her own mother;
- 40 years after vanishing from public view, a trailblazing trans soul singer finally gets her second act in Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Banger Films/NFB) by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, executive produced by Elliot Page.
The festival will also present the US premieres of two NFB shorts:
- Andrea Dorfman’s animated Hairy Legs documents a 13-year-old girl’s small yet life-changing act of rebellion on the road to womanhood and feminism;
- Dieting together seems like a fun idea for two sisters—until things take a dark turn in Eisha Marjara’s doc Am I the skinniest person you’ve ever seen? (Compass Productions/9466-7565 Québec/NFB).
Directors will be in attendance at the festival. All four films will be streaming at DOC NYC following their in-person premieres, with online screenings geo-restricted to the United States.
More about the films
Come As You Are section
November 18, 2024, 6:00 p.m., Village East by Angelika
November 19, 2024, 12:30 p.m., Village East by Angelika
A Mother Apart by Laurie Townshend (89 min)
Producers: Alison Duke and Ngardy Conteh George (Oya Media Group); Justine Pimlott (NFB)
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/a-mother-apart
- How do you raise a child when your own mother abandoned you? In a remarkable story of healing and forgiveness, Staceyann Chin, renowned for performances in Def Poetry Slam and hit solo shows like MotherStruck!, radically re-imagines the essential art of mothering. In seeking her elusive mother—a trail that leads to Brooklyn, Montreal, Cologne and, finally, Jamaica—Staceyann and her daughter forge a new sense of home.
- Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary, Best First Feature Award and Best Canadian Feature Award at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, Toronto.
- Laurie Townshend is a Toronto-based filmmaker, writer and educator. Her films centre on the human capacity to transform small acts of courage into quiet revolutions, as seen in the dramatic short The Railpath Hero (2013, TIFF Black Star Series), the unscripted series Human Frequency Streetdocs (2014) and the award-winning short doc Charley (2016).