By Rin Yanase

“She loves me. She loves me not.”

The voice of a young woman echoes through the blurry neon lights of Seoul on screen. It’s Feb. 26 and Helen Lee’s short film about adoption and motherhood, Subrosa (2000), is screening at The Commons in Toronto.

Maternity Vexed: Dialogues with Her, is the newest event in This is the Feminist Archive: Canadian Film and Video 1970s – 90s, an ongoing screening series founded in 2024 by award-winning filmmaker and former Toronto Metropolitan University professor emeritus, Marusya Bociurkiw.

The event screened a total of seven films and videos by six filmmakers, followed by a discussion and Q&A session with Helen Lee, the director of Subrosa, and Caroline Langill, the director of Nora (1997) and Angel in the House (1998).

The films struck visitors with their delicate and bold portrayals of mother-daughter relationships. All works were filmed in the last three decades of the 20th century.

“Part of the goal was to create a program that also delves into the archive of BIPOC women’s cultural production [in the 70s to 90s],” said Bociurkiw.

While acknowledging the flaws of past waves of feminism, Bociurkiw also sees them as something that we can learn from. She is particularly interested in showcasing how female artists historically engaged with severe oppression while building “new forms of critique and new aesthetics.”

Helen Lee, a Korean-Canadian filmmaker, talks about her experience filming her film, Subrosa, in Seoul. “I was almost like the character in the film, a little bit lost and trying to find my place,” said Lee.

Subrosa tells the story of a young woman who was taken away from South Korea as an adoptee. The woman travels back to her roots, hoping to find her biological mother.

According to the BBC, South Korea’s international adoption program began in reaction to the poverty and the large number of orphans the country was facing in the aftermath of the Korean War in the 1950s.

The program continued for decades, but is set to end by 2029 at the latest due to reported human rights issues, according to CityNews Toronto.

Having met many adoptees who were brought to Europe and the U.S. from South Korea, Lee decided to make a film to show how mentally draining it is to be taken away and unable to reconnect with their home culture and biological parents.

Lexie Corbett, who is a PhD student in cinema & media studies at York University, curated and hosted the event.

In the Q&A session, Corbett articulated the bizarre ambivalence of the mother-daughter relationship.

“It’s also interesting how mom is often more of an experience or a feeling than a person,” she said.

During the curating process for Maternity Vexed, Corbett’s experience of becoming a new mother gave her the idea.

Although she was initially looking through films about pregnancy and giving birth, over time, she realized more films focused on the theme of mother-daughter relationships.

Bociurkiw said her work reflects on how patriarchal systems have concealed the complexity and nuance of motherhood, framing it as a mere necessary, natural step in women’s lives.

The screening highlights creative works by women in the second wave of feminism, which played a role as a counter movement to those misconceptions.

The works featured shifting perspectives from mother to daughter and vice versa, capturing the audience’s attention.

“I liked the combination of films, how they’re in dialogue with each other,” said one of the attendees.

As the series continues to grow, Bociurkiw hopes to build it into a larger platform while preserving its intimacy. “It’s an experiment–we’ll see how that goes!”

The schedule for the next event screening will be updated on their Instagram [at] the.femsarchive.