Violet Gave Willingly immerses us in the colourful and tactile studio and inner life of textile artist Deborah Dumka. An unflinchingly intimate mother–daughter conversation, the film lays bare the continuum and legacy of gender-based discrimination, sexism and sexual violence.

Violet Gave Willingly

“Some days go very fast, and some weeks go very slow,” says a worker in the quarries of the Canadian island of Texada. The human experience of time is relative, but it is nothing compared to the timescale of the limestone being excavated. This stone carries history —not just of humanity, but of the earth itself. And we dig it up, crush it, and use it to make things like toothpaste.