Hannah Fleisch is an independent film studies researcher, image-based artist and bicycle mechanic. She is a recent master's graduate from the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Her current research interests involve collectivity, alternative and DIY modes of image-making and African Cinema with an interest in aesthetics, queerness, and post-coloniality. She is the co-founder of the Poor Image Collective, a former programmer for the Cinema Studies Student Union, and has worked with Toronto film and video organizations including the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and VTape. She is currently project managing POP-UP CINEMATHEQUE at the Media Commons Archives at the University of Toronto, a film series of 16mm that highlights rare gems in the archive. She does freelance work in photography, illustration, animation, design and film and is always picking up new things.
Website designed by Hannah Katarina Fleisch; hosted by Neocities.
Other neocities sites to explore: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Hannah Fleisch
B. Johannesburg, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto, Canada
Education
2022 HBSC University of Toronto, Cinema Studies and Physics
2023 MA University of Toronto, Cinema Studies
2025 Low Res Gallery44
Publications
2021 Malt Adult Screening #21 - Intermission Loop
2024 Cape Creative Collective
2024 Portfolio 1: Portraits taken between 2022-2024, self-published
Professional Experience
2023 LIFT Workshop Super 8 Filmmaking Intensive Workshop: Shooting and Processing
2023 LIFT Hand Processing B+W Film
2023 Analog Resilience Film Labs Gathering
2023 Media Commons Archives "Film as Object" Workshop
Commissions
2022 LIFT Camera Merch Illustrations
2024 Video and Editing, Amelia Maxwell "Daddy & Tonya" Featurette, MiniDV
2024 Additional Camerawork, Maddie Ritter "Same Place" Live Session, MiniDV
Artist's Bio
I am a lens-based artist working in film photography and video ranging between simple, stripped back candid portraits and amateur home video art.
With a multi-disciplinary background in arts, science, and mechanics, I lean into physical, tangible methods and development that reveals the labour and process behind the image. I am influenced by Hito Stereyl’s In Defense of the Moving Image, high contrast black and white magazine photography, and early internet and DIY aesthetics.
Drawing on my community as subjects for my work, my still and video portraits sit somewhere between candid and staged, with a latent potential where subjects act unexpectedly but familiarly. These portraits expand the representation of the subject to represent them in relation to environments and community. I am interested in doubled subjects, reflection, and representations of community, drawing on the queer and diasporic circles I find myself in.
My work ranges from collaborative, in my filmmaking with the Poor Image Collective, and solo for my photography portraiture.
My process emphasizes rediscovery, drawing on my self-taught, DIY artistic background and secondhand equipment to reveal itself in the texture of the images and video. My work retains inconsistencies and imperfections as a mark of the experimentation process and time markings of the methods used.
This work expands the portrait show how relation and environment frame the subject.
Hannah Fleisch
B. Johannesburg, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto, Canada
Education
2018-2022 HBSC University of Toronto, Cinema Studies and Physics
2022-2023 MA University of Toronto, Cinema Studies
2025- PhD in Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Conference Presentations
(2025). Film Collectives: Agency, Ambivalence and Indifference to Self-Identification. FMSAC/ACÉCM 2025: "Autonomies", Kingston, Canada
(2025). Floodlines: Temporal Markers of Exile in Still Life (2006) and This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019). CSGSU CONFERENCE 2025: "Exit Signs", Toronto, Canada
(2024). Making En-masse: Collectivity and Resilience in Contemporary African Film Collectives. Film and Media Studies Association of Canada 2024: Virtual Graduate Colloquium "Mass”, Online
(2024). “Don’t Try This at Home” Fragmented Collectivity in DIY Rude-Boy Media. CSGSU Annual Graduate Student Conference 2024: "Fragmentation", Toronto, Canada
(2023). Transmediality at High/Low Culture Cross-Roads: High Fashion and Low-fi Video in the Work of Thebe Magugu. CSGSU Annual Graduate Student Conference 2023: "Bad Objects", Toronto, Canada
Journal Publications
Hannah Fleisch. (2023). Liquid Ruin: Aquatic Sonic Infidelity in Akosua Adoma Owusu’s Drexciya (2010). Caméra Stylo. 23: 2-12.
Thesis Dissertations
Contemporary African Film Collectives: Producing Collectivity and New Strategies for Resilience. (2023). University of Toronto. Master's Thesis. Supervisor: Dr. Julie MacArthur
Independent Study: Poor Image Collective. (2022). University of Toronto. Bachelor's Honours. Supervisor: Kass Banning
Magazine Entries
(2024). On Collectivity: An Interview with Ajabu Ajabu. TWIST Magazine. (4) Contribution Percentage: 51-60.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant for CIN309H5: Colour and the Moving Image - Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
Teaching Assistant for CIN290H5: Sex Work in Cinema – Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
Teaching Assistant for VCC308H5: Activism in Visual and Media Culture – Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
Teaching Assistant for VCC306H5: Visual Culture and Colonialism – Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
Teaching Assistant for CIN203H5: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock – Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
Teaching Assistant for CIN105Y1: Introduction to Film Study – Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto St. George