b.h. Yael

b.h. Yael is a Toronto based filmmaker, video and installation artist. She is Professor of Integrated Media at OCAD University, past Chair of Senate and past Assistant Dean.

Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to community and activist groups, as well as various educational venues. Her work has been purchased by many universities and she is a recipient of numerous arts grants including the Chalmers Fellowship award. Her essay film Trading the Future, won the ‘Audience Award’ at the Ecofilms festival in Rhodes, Greece.

Yael’s films and installations have dealt with the many intersections of identity and family; it has focused on activist initiatives in Palestine/Israel, as well as apocalypse, geopolitical and environmental urgencies. Select titles include: Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging; In the Middle of the Street; and Palestine Trilogy. Collaborative and collective projects include Spontaneous Combustion; the Olive Project by the Hardpressed Collective; BlahBlahBlah, Re(viewing) Quebec; and the Approximations series with Johanna Householder. Yael has also programmed arts lectures and media screenings, especially the Art Creates Change series at OCADU.

Yael premiered Lessons for Polygamists, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, at the Images festival in April 2017.  No Lies, a one minute short and silent version won the “Most Original Film by a Local Female Director” award at the 2016 Toronto Urban Film Festival and first prize at first prize at the 2018 Gotta Minute Film Festival in Edmonton. She has recently completed a memoire on this family story. As well look out for Mike Hoolboom’s edited book, Family States, on Yael’s work to be published in 2021.

> Next residence at Live Art Ireland in 2025

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Photo : Letter To My Tribe
A video essay directed, written & produced by b.h. Yael, 2024
Film length 98:00 min
English, translated Hebrew & Arabic