The films of Keith Lock
Keith Lock is a filmmaker working across experimental, dramatic, and documentary forms. He is regarded as the first Chinese Canadian filmmakers in Canada. Rather than relying on conventional narrative structures, Lock frequently uses fragmented editing, layered sound, archival materials, and contemplative imagery to create works that challenge dominant historical perspectives and invite reflection on power, history, and collective memory.
His high school film, Flights of Frenzy (1969), won Best Super 8 at the UNESCO Muse International Festival in Amsterdam. After, he worked as an assistant to Claude Jutra and served as cinematographer for Michael Snow on several projects, including Two Sides to Every Story (1974), selected as one of TIFF’s 150 Essential Works of Canadian Cinema. He was a founding member and the first Chair of the Toronto Filmmakers Co-op, Canada’s first film co-op, which later became LIFT. He also founded New Films, one of the first regular screening series for independent and experimental film in Toronto, which later evolved into The Funnel. His experimental feature Everything Everywhere Again Alive (1975) was included in TIFF’s 1984 retrospective of Canadian cinema and was later named one of the “100 Best Canadian Films of All Time” in 2020 by AGO Film Curator Jim Shedden.
More recently, Lock was a featured artist at 8Fest Toronto (2016) and created the 360 VR prototype The Secret for the NFB in 2017. He served as executive producer on the feature film Café Daughter (2023), which won the Audience Choice Award at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. His most recent documentary, Relics of Love and War (2023), explores a lesser-known chapter of Chinese Canadian history and has screened internationally at festivals and independent venues.
© Photo Credit : Mike Tjioe
6 products
Relics of Love and War
Duration: 40 minutes
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Chinese Canadian filmmaker, Keith Lock, narrates the story of how his mother married his father while he was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission: Operation Oblivion. This incredible story is set against the backdrop of the Second World War, a time when Chinese Canadians could not vote, swim in pools, or hire white women for their businesses...
The Dreaming House
Duration: 6 minutes
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The filmmaker, his father and his youngest child walk past the house in Chinatown where the filmmaker’s father was born, triggering a sublime moment.
Parade
Duration: 5 minutes
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_Parade_ is made of three parts, with each part using a different film language. The first segment uses narrative film language to tell a mysterious story. The second part uses expressionist visual language. The third sequence is composed of events all happening simultaneously which, in film, can only be shown as a sequence. The title _Parade_ refers to the fact that film is composed of individ...
Everything Everywhere Again Alive
Everything Everywhere Again Alive
New product!Duration: 1h12
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In the early 1970s, Keith Lock moved to the hippie community of Buck Lake, north of Kingston, Ontario. He went there to join members of Toronto’s underground scene, capturing the daily life of a horizontal, ideal society, free from urban oppression. The result is one of the masterpieces of Canadian experimental cinema, but above all a free-spirited film that challenges the very idea of freedom.
Relics of Love and War
Duration: 40 minutes
Subscription access
Chinese Canadian filmmaker, Keith Lock, narrates the story of how his mother married his father while he was training with other Chinese Canadian veteran volunteers for the top secret suicide mission: Operation Oblivion. This incredible story is set against the backdrop of the Second World War, a time when Chinese Canadians could not vote, swim in pools, or hire white women for their businesses...
The Dreaming House
Duration: 6 minutes
Subscription access
The filmmaker, his father and his youngest child walk past the house in Chinatown where the filmmaker’s father was born, triggering a sublime moment.
Parade
Duration: 5 minutes
Subscription access
_Parade_ is made of three parts, with each part using a different film language. The first segment uses narrative film language to tell a mysterious story. The second part uses expressionist visual language. The third sequence is composed of events all happening simultaneously which, in film, can only be shown as a sequence. The title _Parade_ refers to the fact that film is composed of individ...
Everything Everywhere Again Alive
Everything Everywhere Again Alive
New product!Duration: 1h12
Subscription access
In the early 1970s, Keith Lock moved to the hippie community of Buck Lake, north of Kingston, Ontario. He went there to join members of Toronto’s underground scene, capturing the daily life of a horizontal, ideal society, free from urban oppression. The result is one of the masterpieces of Canadian experimental cinema, but above all a free-spirited film that challenges the very idea of freedom.
