As film exhibition slowly emerges after the pandemic, artists and their works face a challenge: a film’s age or exhibition history often makes it ineligible for programming. Composed of 6 works created over several decades and outside of typical festival eligibility rules, If a tree falls brings together films that channel space and time as a response to the world the filmmaker is immersed in.

Drawn from the CFMDC catalogue, these works explore spirituality and place, human relationships and narratives across time, and our relationships to the physical spaces we live within.

In the written companion to the project, artists Daniel McIntyre and Rolla Tahir consider the dialogue between their own art practices and those of their artistic colleagues in the CFMDC collection. As artists and co-curators, McIntyre and Tahir ask how the life of an artistic work is affected by systems that benefit exhibitors, questioning what artists and audiences lose in the process. While exploring the tension between how viewers access work and how it accesses an audience, If a tree falls seeks a space where dialogue, experience, and expression are unbound by premiere status, length, and completion year.