Curatorial Statement
from Co-Artistic Directors
danielle Mackenzie Long & Erin Lum
What does it mean to make way for the new?
New chapters often begin with a collapse. As a festival produced by artists who are continuously enduring the arts sector’s precarities, our team’s capacity for thinking beyond conventional structures and actualizing bold learning opportunities is the foundation of our work together. Our commitment to dreaming and shifting has graciously held us for the past eleven years, and we continue to honour this approach as we step into the next decade of FORM.
In a world proliferated with overabundance, we’re tasked with the challenge of processing the masses of information and discourse that engulf us. What emerges is a need to reconsider how we are meant to decipher, respond, or even resist this excess. This is no obstacle to tackle in isolation—we invite you to ask these questions with us as we gather for our closing screening, Information Overload!!!
Each film that you’ll see in our programming are pieces of artists’ lived realities that have been so generously trusted with us. When movement and film interact, we’re offered the possibility to build an embodied understanding of new perspectives. Films allow us to witness experiences that we might not otherwise come across or have access to; this is a privilege to take seriously. This year’s films traverse across continents, revive ancestral dances, observe the nuances of the everyday, and weave histories of disconnected identities back together. Movement deepens these connections, leaving memories within our bodies and imprints on our souls.
We move through FORM 2026 with a renewed sense of clarity for filmmaking’s purpose. Film is an essential practice for Youth and Emerging artists to exercise their agency, author personal perspectives, and meaningfully (re)define their experiences. These inevitable endings have recentered our ethos as a festival, revealing art’s role in navigating an ever-changing world.
danielle and Erin
Co-Artistic Directors
