This month, Early Monthly Segments is very pleased to host a screening of 16mm films by US-based filmmaker Mary Helena Clark. Clark is in Toronto to work on a new film based on Franco Moretti’s book Signs Taken for Wonders, the title of which could be an apt description of much of Clark’s filmography. Clark’s films place emphasis on fragments and momentary discoveries, whether the physical imprints of rotting textbooks found in a deserted school, as in After Writing, the very material detritus on a well-worn film print of Jean Cocteu’s Orphée, highlighted in Orpheus (outtakes), or the way traveling through an iconic city like San Francisco, featured in The Dragon is the Frame, can capture references to moments gone-by—both universal and personal.

The child: a subject like any other, in life as in film. But when the child appears on the screen, the adult viewer sees what he has been and will never be: a being in his early life.

This terrible and banal observation of the passage of time is accompanied by a working memory: the projected image is superimposed on that of his own childhood. And for each, according to his/her own history, memories emerge full of tender nostalgia and memories of specific painful moments.

From the newborn (Le corps humain, Alexandre Larose) to adolescence (Dressage, Julika Rudelius), these portraits of children will complement the extensive gallery that was formed from the origins of cinema.