Julietta Singh speaks about history, home, and matriarchs at Beyond Siloed Stories, November 5 at the Chan Centre
Event features screening of The Nest, the writer’s form-pushing NFB documentary re-animating her childhood home’s past, co-directed with Chase Joynt
A scene from The Nest.
The house at the centre of The Nest.
The National Film Board, UBC, and DOC NW present Beyond Siloed Stories, with writer-director Julietta Singh, on November 5 at 6:30 pm the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
PUSHING THE DOCUMENTARY form, Julietta Singh and Chase Joynt’s The Nest tracks decolonial writer Singh’s deeply personal journey back to her childhood home, where she uncovers the history of the women who lived there over 140 years. It interweaves the histories of Indigenous, Deaf, Japanese, and South Asian communities connected to the house.
Delving into themes of memory, matriarchy, and the legacies of silenced voices, it uses the space of the deteriorating brick mansion on the banks of the Assiniboine River as a base to transport the audience through time and to both show how history connects us all and to reveal who gets lost in “official” archives. The house holds difficult memories for Singh, whose mother worked hard to run a B&B in the once-grand colonial structure, and yet it’s a source of fascination and wonder for Singh’s own daughter.
The NFB film is set to screen at Vancouver’s Chan Centre in a free event called Beyond Siloed Stories, with UBC professor and associate dean equity for the faculty of arts Dylan Robinson hosting a talk with Singh afterward.
Among the topics Singh will discuss is the unique process behind the film, including her and Joynt’s collaboration with community members, including writer Katherena Vermette, actors Junko Bailey and Johanna Phillips, and actor and ASL translator Joanna Hawkins, to “re-animate” rather than re-enact their histories. Live ASL-English interpretation will be provided at the talk.
Singh is an award-winning non-fiction writer and academic whose books include No Archive Will Restore You, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements, and The Breaks—the last one a letter to her daughter about race and mothering at the end of the world. 
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