Bio

Midi Onodera is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist who has been making films and videos for 35+ years. In 2018, Midi received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. Her work is laced with markers of her experiences as a feminist, lesbian, Japanese-Canadian woman. She has produced over 25 independent shorts, ranging from 16mm film to digital video to toy camera formats. Her film The Displaced View (1988) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Skin Deep (1995), her theatrical feature, screened internationally at festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2006 she has made over 500 Vidoodles (defined as bite-sized 30 second to 2 minute video doodles). Each year since 2009 she presents an annual video project addressing themes of language, media, politics and everyday life. Her online videos can be viewed at: www.midionodera.com or www.vidoodles.com.

Works

The Displaced View

  • 1988
  • Midi Onodera

"The Displaced View" traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history are revealed.

Displaced View, The

C'est à qui, cette ville?

  • 2022
  • Midi Onodera

"C'est à qui, cette ville?" is a response to the 1984 film, “Ville, Quelle Ville?” This original super 8 film documented various places in Toronto’s east end and reflected upon a young woman’s life in the city.

Still from C'est à qui, cette ville?

I have no memory of my direction

  • 2005
  • Midi Onodera

“II have no memory of my direction" is a feature-length experimental narrative. The story unfolds through a Canadian-born Japanese woman’s voice-over as she dreams her way though Japan. Ostensibly searching for an emotional connection with her aging father, the woman contemplates her own inherited culture and familial touchstones. Her North American pop-culture sensibility fuses with a distorted Japanese perspective to create a surreal interpretation of a “Japan of the imagination.”

I have no memory of my direction

The Basement Girl

  • 2000
  • Midi Onodera

Abandoned by her lover, a young woman finds comfort and safety in her basement apartment. Mundane routines, a diet of junk food and the warmth of the television insulate her from the pain and betrayal of her ill-fated relationship.

Basement Girl, The

Skin Deep

  • 1995
  • Midi Onodera

Skin Deep leads us into worlds where people are never what they appear to be.

Still from Skin Deep

A Performance by Jack Smith

  • 1992
  • Midi Onodera

In October of 1984, the highly acclaimed New York artist, Jack Smith, came to Toronto for a week long performance/Halloween ritual at the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre. This performance, true to Smithesque form, went by three different titles: “Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application,” “Brassieres of Uranus,” and “Impacted Croissants From Outer Space.” Accompanied by the music of Yma Sumac, this short piece remains the last film documentation of this historic event.

Performance by Jack Smith, A

Made in Japan

  • 1985
  • Midi Onodera

Made in Japan (2.5 min.,1985): North American portrayals of Japan perpetuate the myths of Americanized culture, distorting and misrepresenting traditional values.

Made in Japan

Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

  • 1985
  • Midi Onodera

"Parallax is the apparent change in position of an object resulting from the change in direction or position from which it is viewed." Confusion, underlying meaning, and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a “one night stand,” they generate unique sensations - mixed emotion, risk, excitement.

Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

The Dead Zone

  • 1985
  • Midi Onodera

The Dead Zone (2.5 min.,1985): Images, repetitive in visual completion, combine with a popular music track and self-acknowledging voice-over to form a void of numbed loneliness and dissatisfaction. Part of the triptych “Three Short Films.”

Dark title card that has bold text that says "The Dead Zone" centered in the top of the screen.

Ville-quelle ville?

  • 1984
  • Midi Onodera

Ville-quelle ville ? (4 min.,1984): While Onodera's earlier work explored the possibility of imaging women's subjective relationship to a world constructed through male-dominated codes of representation, “Ville-quelle ville ? ” moves into the genre of the film-poem, utilizing a voice-over to emphasize the disjunction of the documentary image and the subjective impressions which constitute a woman's internal reality.

Ville-quelle ville?

Home Was Never Like This

  • 1983
  • Midi Onodera

Step-printed images of a “home” - a suburban house, no people in sight - combine with a children's story, told in saccarine tones, about the country mouse who discovers that "there's no place like home." A gently told tale of alienation.

Home Was Never Like This

idiot's delight

  • 1983
  • Midi Onodera

"Almost any solitaire game is often humorously called 'Idiot's Delight.'" - Official Rules of Card Games Black-and-white images of waves dissolving over stills of gravestones, old fences, boats on the shore, and a voice meditating on the joys of celibacy.

Idiot's Delight

The Bird that Chirped on Bathurst

  • 1981
  • Midi Onodera

The intermittently heard voice-over talks about a woman's self-awareness - being unable to know if she has really changed or not. The images are esoteric and hard to interpret: young women in black in various urban settings, something moving rhythmically. A personal, yet intriguing film.

Bird that Chirped on Bathurst, The