Curated by Emily Henderson
June 1st – 13th, 2025
Vtape, Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space
4th floor, 401 Richmond St. W. suite 452
Tuesday – Saturday 12-5 pm EDT
For 25 years, imagineNATIVE and Vtape have illuminated screens with profound, evocative, humorous, and trailblazing Indigenous stories and cinema. This long-standing partnership has given way to the flagship program, the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, celebrated annually in downtown Toronto with a host of screenings, panels, and events. Throughout this time, countless connections have been made, careers nurtured, and spaces carved out for Indigenous filmmakers and creatives in previously unprecedented capacities, spurring subsequent partnerships, incubators, and massive contributions to Indigenous media now celebrated the world over. In Reel Kinship, the stories that have flourished out of the partnership between imagineNATIVE and Vtape are explored through this multimedia installation that pays homage to the earliest beginnings of the collaboration to the continued creativity in present day. Told through photographs, ephemera, and the scores of writing that have been produced throughout the last two and a half decades, Reel Kinship dives deeper into the worlds that live beyond the screens and the people and partnerships that have remained an enduring presence in the ever-growing field of Indigenous film and media arts.