The Cinematheque

A nomadic film artist whose work evades easy classification, Italian-Canadian director (and SFU instructor) Simone Rapisarda Casanova has received international plaudits for his poetic and principled brand of ​“meta-documentary.” His trio of features—each shot in a different country, each concerned with a culture on the edge of erasure, along with the ethics of documenting it—deftly blend (and blur) narrative, non-fiction, ethnographic, and avant-garde approaches in an attempt to reveal what Rapisarda Casanova calls the ​“spirit of place,” a soul that remembers what occurred there. His first film, the Cuban-set El árbol de las fresas (2011), was named one of the Best Undistributed Films of 2012 by Film Comment; its much-admired follow-up, La creazione di significato (2014), garnered Rapisarda Casanova the prestigious Best Emerging Director prize at Locarno.

We are honoured to premiere Rapisarda Casanova’s new film Zanj Hegel la (2018), shot in Haiti and co-written with its cast and crew, alongside screenings of his acclaimed previous features.