Artist

b.h. Yael

b.h. Yael is a Toronto-based filmmaker, video and installation artist. She is Professor of Integrated Media at OCAD University, past Chair of Senate and past Assistant Dean.

Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to community and activist groups, as well as various educational venues. Her work has been purchased by many universities and she is a recipient of numerous arts grants including a Chalmers Fellowship award. Her essay film
Trading the Future won the Audience Award at the Ecofilms festival in Rhodes, Greece.

Yael’s films and installations have dealt with the many intersections of identity and family; they have focused on activist initiatives in Palestine/Israel, as well as apocalypse, geopolitical and environmental urgencies. Select titles include:
Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging; In the Middle of the Street; and Palestine Trilogy. Collaborative and collective projects include Spontaneous Combustion; the Olive Project by the Hardpressed Collective; BlahBlahBlah: Re(viewing) Quebec; and the Approximations series, with Johanna Householder, short works examining filmic representations of gender. The first of these, titled The Mission, is a shot-for-shot recreation, edited in camera, of the opening scene of Francis Coppola's 1979 landmark, Apocalypse Now. The Mission is a comedic piece which calls into question the gendering of redemption. A second piece, December 31, 2000, is based on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. December 31, 2000 is an ironic and humorous reversal of domesticity and of a gendered apocalypse, pointing to the failure of the future.

Yael has also programmed arts lectures and media screenings, especially the Art Creates Change series at OCADU. She has worked in the sphere of independent film and video since the mid 1980's.
As a past Coordinator of Programming at the Images Festival of Independent Film and Video, Yael was involved in the development of that festival in its first years; she also developed workshops and selected programming at Trinity Square Video.

In past, Yael has served on the Boards of Northern Visions (Images festival) and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, and on the Steering Committee of the Centre for Media and Culture in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She has worked on programming committees, such as A Space Gallery and the Euclid Theatre, and has sat on many arts council juries.

Yael premiered
Lessons for Polygamists, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, at the Images festival in April 2017. No Lies, a one-minute short and silent version won the Most Original Film by a Local Female Director award at the 2016 Toronto Urban Film Festival and first prize at the 2018 Gotta Minute Film Festival in Edmonton. She has recently completed a memoir on this family story. Look for Mike Hoolboom’s edited book, Family States, on Yael’s work (2021), available at https://www.mikehoolboom.com/thenewsite/docs/BHYael-FamilyStates.pdf

Artist Code: 264

Videography

No Lies

2017, 01:00 minutes, colour, English subtitles

Lessons for Polygamists

2017, 14:30 minutes, colour, English and French subtitles

Ken Tov Beseder

2010, 04:36 minutes, colour, Hebrew, Arabic & English

Trading the Future

2008, 59:00 minutes, colour, English

Palestine Trilogy: documentations in history

2006, 75:00 minutes, colour, English, Hebrew & Arabic

A Hot Sandfilled Wind

2006, 13:00 minutes, colour, English, Hebrew & Arabic

Even in the Desert

2006, 33:00 minutes, colour, English

Deir Yassin Remembered

2006, 28:00 minutes, colour, English

Verbatim

2005, 07:45 minutes, colour, English, Aramaic, Chinese

Triskaidekaphobia

2003, 05:57 minutes, colour, English

Approximations (Parts 1 - 3)

2002, 18:41 minutes, colour, English

In the Middle of the Street

2002, 33:00 minutes, colour, English

The Lonely Lesbian

2002, 04:45 minutes, colour, English

Next to Last Tango

2001, 07:00 minutes, colour, English / French

December 31, 2000

2001, 07:20 minutes, colour, English

The Mission

2000, 04:21 minutes, colour, English

FRESH BLOOD, A Consideration of Belonging

1996, 55:00 minutes, colour, English

Ladies Shorts Tape 2

1995, 39:20 minutes, colour, English

Is Dad Dead Yet?

1991, 35:00 minutes, colour, English

My Mother Is A Dangerous Woman

1987, 16:00 minutes, colour, English

Jain Walks The Line

1986, 05:00 minutes, colour, English

You Belong To Me

1986, 06:00 minutes, colour, English

Why She Got Pregnant

1985, 05:00 minutes, colour, English

Critical Writing

Fable for Tomorrow, Wendy Coburn
by Andrea Fatona et al. Toronto: Onsite Gallery, 2023.
B.H. Yael: Family States
by Mike Hoolboom. Toronto: converSalon, 2021.
Geopolitics & The Videos of b.h.Yael
by Richard Fung. Fierce: Women's Hot Blooded Film and Video, Mar. 10, 2010. Hamilton: McMaster Museum of Art, 2010.
Ardent Spaces, Formidable Environments
by Patricia R. Zimmerman. Fierce: Women's Hot Blooded Film/Video, Mar. 2010. Hamilton: McMaster Museum of Art, 2010.
Video Essay questions religious apocalypse
by Barbara Shainbaum. Jewish Tribune, Apr. 11, 2008.
Must do: if you only do five things this week
by National Post. The National Post, Mar. 29, 2008.
Lollipops and the Future: Two feature films at Images look to lure...
by Jessica Padykula. SceneandHeard.ca, Apr. 7, 2008, v. 8, no. 2.
Strategic Approximation: Independent Videographers Revise the...
by Janice Hladki. Feminist Media Studies Journal, Mar. 2008, v. 6, no. 1.
Corporeal Pedagogy and Contemporary Video Art
by Stephanie Springgay. Art Education, Mar. 2008, v. 61, no. 2.
The Curatorial Incubator Round II
by Marty Spellerberg..
Johanna Householder: Ambiguous Redemptions
by Ian Carr-Harris. Caught In the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women, 2004. Toronto: YYZ, 2004.
No Where Near the End, or, No notes Towards Trading the Future
by b.h. Yael. Fuse, Nov. 2002, v. 25, no. 4.
Art for Glob
by Richard Fung. Fuse, Nov. 2002, v. 25, no. 4.
Wide Impact
by Deirdre Hanna. NOW, Apr. 12, 2001, v. 20, no. 32.
1998 British Canadian Video Exchange
1998 British Canadian Video Exchange, 1998. Toronto: Vtape, 1998.
1998 British Canadian Video Exchange
1998 British Canadian Video Exchange, 1998. Toronto: V tape, 1998.
Fresh Blood: A Consideration of Belonging
by Sandra Haar. Fuse, Winter 1997, v. 20, no. 1.
Video artist reconstructs shifting Jewish identity: Fresh Blood...
by Cameron Bailey. Now, Sept. 19, 1996, v. 16, no. 3.
Home video makes Yael's tale a true saga: Roots quest covers...
by Peter Goddard. The Toronto Star, Sept. 19, 1996.
Mirror Machine: Video and Identity
by Janine Marchessault. Toronto: YYZ Books, 1996.
Desiring Daughters
by Renee Baert. Screen, Summer 1993, v. 34, no. 2.
This feminist film is drop-dead funny
by Craig MacInnis. The Toronto Star, Jan. 15, 1991.
Detonate!: (They Blew Up Real Good)
by Randi Spires. Fuse, Spring 1990, v. 13, no. 4.
Film & Video On The Level
by B.H. Yael. Fuse, Fall 1987.
The 1986 New Work Show
by Geoffery Shea. Cinema Canada, Nov. 1986.