At the request of Sylvia D. Hamilton, slated to deliver the Walsh Lecture in 2020 which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 FMSAC Conference featured the inaugural Sylvia D. Hamilton Dialogues, an event that highlighted the critical, scholarly, and creative work of a panel of emerging Black filmmakers, curators, critics, and scholars. The event included an introduction by Sylvia D. Hamilton and a moderated Q&A. The association now presents such a panel at each annual conference, expanding the scope to include emerging BIPOC figures within the academy and the arts in conversation with their peers and representatives of FMSAC.
2025
Haitian-Canadian filmmaker Miryam Charles (Cette maison, Tous les jours de mai, Toward the Colonies) in conversation with Malini Guha (Carleton University) and Chloé Savoie-Bernard (Queen’s University). Moderated by Aminé par Milka Njoroge (Queen’s University).
2024 – Haunted Futurity: Extended Temporalities in Black British Artists’ Moving Image Practice
Warren Crichlow (York University): Temporal Labour in The Third Part of the Third Measure: Conjugating The Otolith Group’s Julius Eastman
Kass Banning (University of Toronto): The ‘Ethics of Beauty’: Isaac Julien Meets Alain Locke
2023 – Black Canadian Filmmakers in Conversation: On the Imaginings of ‘Nah’
This session, in collaboration with Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA), brought together two award-winning Black Canadian filmmakers — Sylvia D. Hamilton and Cheryl Foggo — to engage in a discussion about their work in conversation with the BCSA conference theme, ‘Nah’, an exclamation as an expression, response, and exhortation of Black refusals.
2022
Video-essayist and moving images curator Desirée de Jesús (York University) and Haitian-born video artist and filmmaker Esery Mondesir in conversation with filmmaker and video installation artist Nicolas Renaud.
2021
The first “Hamilton Dialogues” featured Dr. Ayanna Dozier (Fordham University and Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art), Courtney Small (Founder of Cinema Axis blog, host Changing Reels podcast, and co-host of the Frameline radio show), and Sarah-Tai Black (Artistic Director of Saskatoon’s PAVED Arts, co-host of Netflix Film Club’s online video series Black Film School) and was moderated by May Chew (Concordia University).