As part of our New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture, IWC is thrilled to present “Fire Ecologies,” a double-feature film screening at the Innovation Centre downtown!
The first featured film is Mariel Belanger and Sienna Belanger-Lee’s Horse Woman sn̓kłca̓ʔsqáx̌aʔ tkłmílxʷ (32 minutes). This screening is followed by Playing with Fire (71 minutes), directed by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens.
Come down to the Innovation Centre for 5:30 pm for a chance to mingle and chat with the filmmakers and to grab some snacks! The film screening begins at 6:00 pm. Light catering and refreshments will be provided.
Entry is a $6 - $10 sliding scale. Tickets available at the door. Become a member and support the IWC programming by checking out our Membership page.
About sn̓kłca̓ʔsqáx̌aʔ tkłmílxʷ Horse Woman: On syilx territory, sn̓kłca̓ʔsqáx̌aʔ tkłmílxʷ Horse Woman follows mother daughter duo, Mariel and Sienna as they navigate grief, care, and responsibility through their shared relationship with land and horses. As wildfire threatens their home, mother and daughter reveal parallel paths of healing, intuition, and Indigenous stewardship rooted in place.
About Mariel and Sienna: Mariel Belanger and Sienna Belanger-Lee are a mother–daughter creative team working within syilx/Okanagan territory. Their collaborations centre intergenerational knowledge, land-based practice, and Indigenous law as lived experience. Together, their work explores how story, responsibility, and resurgence are carried across generations—not as inheritance, but as ongoing practice.
About Playing with Fire: When lightning strikes ignite a firestorm in the redwood forests of Boulder Creek, CA, artist-activists, Beth and Annie—partners for 23 years—are forced to evacuate with their dog, Butch. They don’t just survive the CZU Fire—they are transformed by it.
This fiery documentary becomes a love letter to resilience, queerness, and the Earth. The couple navigates trauma, social fires, and climate crisis—honoring voices from formerly incarcerated firefighters to Indigenous elders to trans community. Albert, a wild, white peacock helps narrate the story, which ends with a Wedding to Fire. Can we learn to live with fire instead of fighting it? This mythopoetic doc film dares to imagine a future aflame with love.
About Beth and Annie: Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle have created multi-media art projects about love, sex, and queer ecologies together since 2002. Annie was a sex worker who morphed into a feminist performance artist. Since 1994 Beth has been a professor at the University of California Santa Cruz since 1994. They co-direct the nonprofit E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF. This dynamic duo makes printed matter, writes books, and has gallery exhibitions of their multimedia artworks. They also create performance art, walking tours, and produce eco-activist symposiums. Their book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover, (U of Minnesota press) chronicles their epic love story and art/life adventures. A new feature film, Playing with Fire—An Ecosexual Emergency, is their third in a trilogy of feature films that explore environmental issues through an ecosexual lens.
As part of the Partnership Engagement Grant, Biodiversities of Gender is co-sponsoring and co-organizing this event.
The New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture 2026 is made possible by the support of the City of Kelowna, the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and the Okanagan School of Education at UBC Okanagan, the Province of British Columbia, the Government of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Espaces Francophone, and BNA Brewing Co.
We acknowledge our events take place on the unceded territory of the Syilx/Okanagan Peoples and that we are uninvited guests on their ancestral lands. We invite anyone who comes to our events to check out https://www.syilx.org/about-us/syilx-nation/ to learn about, connect with, and endeavour towards reconciliation within our community.
Photo courtesy of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens.