DVS Filmmaker-in-Residence Events
Please join us for three upcoming events with UTM Department of Visual Studies filmmakers-in-residence Shireen Seno and John Torres! All are welcome.
Film Screening: Nervous Translation, in conversation with Shireen Seno, John Torres, Elizabeth Wijaya, and Bliss Cua Lim
When/Where: Monday, March 17, 7pm, Innis Town Hall
Registration Link: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/screening-nervous-translation-director-shireen-seno-and-producer-john-torres
Film Screening: "Films from the Living Room," in conversation with John Torres, Shireen Seno, Lai Weijie, and Lawrence Garcia
When/Where: Tuesday, March 18, 3 to 5pm, CC1140, Communication, Culture, and Technology Building, UTM Campus
Registration Link: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/films-living-room-john-torres
Artist Talk: “Parasitical filmmaking strategies (Or, how familial relationships influence our filmmaking)," with John Torres and Shireen Seno
When/Where: Thursday, March 20, 3 to 5pm, CDRS at MN3230, Third Floor, Maanjiwe nendamowinan Building, UTM Campus
Registration Link: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/parasitical-filmmaking-strategies-or-how-familial-relationships-influence-our-filmmaking-john
Shireen Seno is an artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history, and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. A recipient of the 2018 Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, she is known for her films which have won awards at Rotterdam, Punto de Vista, Shanghai, Olhar de Cinema, Vladivostok, Jogja-Netpac, and Lima Independiente and have screened at numerous international festivals and art institutions. Seno was a 2022 Film Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program and 2023 Visiting Professor for ArteVisione at c/o in Milan. Her first solo exhibition in Europe, "A child dies, a child plays, a woman is born, a woman dies, a bird arrives, a bird flies off," at daadgalerie in Berlin in 2023, travelled to Esplanade - Theatres By the Bay in Singapore in 2024. Her work is in the collections of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive. Seno graduated with a major in Architectural Studies in 2005.
John Torres is an independent filmmaker, musician and writer, known for his highly personal and poetic style. He co-runs Los Otros, a Manila-based space, film lab, and platform committed to the intersections of film and art, with a focus on process over product. His work fictionalizes and reworks personal and found documentations of love, family relations, and memory in relation to current events, hearsays, myth, and folklore. Weaving together archival clips, found footage, and visually powerful imagery, his films unfold narrative structures, often with strong autobiographical references, that defy conventional tropes and genres.
