NiaFlix: Village Keeper

NiaFlix: A Night at the Centre is a monthly movie night series that centres movies, films and Black storytellers that showcase Black Artistic Expression. Each night will transport you through stories that blend nostalgia, art, and culture, giving you that cozy Netflix vibe right at Nia Centre!

On Thursday, October 9th, we’re hosting a special screening of Karen Chapman’s Village Keeper (2024).

Village Keeper follows a family grappling with secrets that uphold domestic abuse and unresolved rage. After life’s precarious scale tips her fortune back into poverty, Jean relocates her children, with their grandmother, to the community housing project where she grew up. Jean lives in constant fear of everything that could go wrong, going to great lengths to shelter her children, so when a spree of violence comes to her doorstep, she secretly cleans an abandoned crime scene, which unknowingly leads her on a path that exposes generational chains of silence, self-discovery and finally putting herself first.

Snacks and light refreshments will be made available. After the screening, Toronto-based filmmaker Kourtney Jackson will be in conversation with Village Keeper’s director, Karen Chapman.

About the Panelists

Karen Chapman

Born to a Guyanese family that nurtured her instinctive creative problem solving skills, award-winning artist Karen Chapman has always been acquainted with versatility. Her steep background in documentary storytelling developed a voice and style that is compassionate, compelling and brave. Preparing her for an expansive repertoire of films that includes documentaries, narratives, animation, interactive-virtual reality and installation. At the service of every story, Chapman always strives to centre work that is grounded in impact.

Kourtney Jackson

Kourtney Jackson is a Toronto-based filmmaker and lens-based artist. Her artistic practice employs hybridized and experimental forms of storytelling that permeate interiorities of Black queer womanhood. In lieu of “representation” as a means for legibility, her work endeavours toward a repatriation of the self through somatic, spiritual, and ecological sensibilities. Her award-winning films have screened locally and internationally at festivals including TIFF Next Wave (Toronto), BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia), Sundance Film Festival, Ignite x Adobe (Utah), and the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (Montréal).