For many years a long photograph featuring 60 women in western style costumes has hung in the hallway at the entrance of Sara Angelucci’s house. The picture was given to her husband by his Aunt Dagmar. They knew little about it, other than Dagmar had cut the costumes the women were wearing when she worked at Malabar, Toronto’s renowned costume house. Angelucci often wondered who the women were, how the photograph was taken, and what it meant to Dagmar (who died in 2011).

Cirkut/Canadettes unpacks the many layers of this photograph, personal, local/social, and technological history. Through archival research Angelucci not only discovers who the women are, but opens up a window into the time the image was taken, Toronto in 1956. Interwoven with her own reflections, her voiceover narrative draws from articles and quotes of the time, giving voice to attitudes of the period, and the desire and mysteries that photographs hold.