Movies by Sofia Bohdanowicz
Never Eat Alone
An elderly widow (Joan Benac) starts to wonder what happened to a would-be lover from her past who appeared with her in a live televised drama in the 1950s. After discovering the show in CBC’s archive, her granddaughter Audrey (Deragh Campbell) attempts to try and track the man down.
Point and Line to Plane
A young woman attempts to extract meaning from an intense loss as she encounters signs in her daily life and through the art of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. Point and Line to Plane portrays the phenomenon of magical thinking endured during an individual’s journey to process, heal and document a period of mourning.
A Prayer
In a little house all for herself, an elderly woman moves through her day. While she tends to every chore on the docket, we learn some things about her. She has a green thumb, she speaks Polish while on the phone, she likes to nap. A prayer sounds. They are words from her mother-in-law, Polish poet Zofia Bohdanowiczowa, who was also displaced from her native Poland. Three generations meet, one by writing, one by living, and the third by the very making of this film, a composition of her ancestors through sound and image.
Maison du Bonheur
When asked to make a documentary about her friend’s mother—a Parisian astrologer named Juliane—the filmmaker sets off for Montmartre with a Bolex to craft a portrait of an infectiously exuberant personality and the pre-war apartment she’s called home for 50 years.
MS Slavic 7
After being appointed literary executor, Audrey Benac (Deragh Campbell) uncovers a series of letters that her great-grandmother had written to a fellow poet. Both displaced from Poland, Zofia Bohdanowiczowa and Nobel Prize nominee Jozef Wittlin corresponded from 1957-1964 between Toronto, Wales and New York City. Over the course of three days, Audrey embarks on a journey to Houghton Library at Harvard University to translate and make sense of Zofia’s words.
The Soft Space
The corridors, stairways and platforms of a subway station are juxtaposed with the human body, each broken into parts and positioned in an existential consideration of the transient spaces we unconsciously traverse everyday.
The Hardest Working Cat in Showbiz
Explore the legend of Hollywood’s most celebrated cat, Orangey, in this adaptation of Dan Sallitt’s essay of the same name. The prolific feline actor’s 16-year filmography includes roles in Rhubarb (1951), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)—or did it? The protege of star animal trainer Frank Inn, Orangey’s storied career leads Sallitt – who shares the screen here with another curious co-star – on the trail of a mystery.
An Evening
In the minutes that it takes for a day to lose itself to darkness, we see a house that has suddenly become empty. It is the home of Maria, who has recently passed, and who has left her mark in every corner of every room. A portrait of absence is also an attempt to resurrect the dead, perhaps even a moment of magical thinking. The winter outside is well settled, snow accompanies each thought. Based on a poem by Zofia Bohdanowiczowa.
Another Prayer
Images from the past are projected onto the left-behind spaces of the present in a poetic act of haunting and resurrection as the filmmaker tries to recreate the memory of her grandmother.