Janna Watson | Undercurrent at T.O. Indie Film Festival

Wednesday, September 16th, 2026
Paradise Theatre | 6:00 PM
1006 Bloor Street West

Undercurrent follows painter Janna Watson through the long, solitary hours of studio work, where intuition, memory, control, and accident are in constant negotiation. Filmmaker Mike Bernard was drawn to the tension in Watson’s paintings, which feel spontaneous and fluid yet deeply intentional.

Rather than explaining the work, the film moves the way painting does: attentive to rhythm, texture, and the small decisions that accumulate into something larger. It stays with what’s moving beneath the surface of a painting coming into being.

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Director Biography

Mike Bernard is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary creative working across documentary and branded storytelling, with a background in photography (BAA, Ryerson University) and early roots in design and motion. His work focuses on making complex systems—and the people moving through them—clear, human, and accessible, often exploring architecture, infrastructure, recovery, and the systems we rarely stop to notice, guided by care, curiosity, and a preference for clarity over hype.

Director's Statement

Painters spend long hours alone with their work. From the outside, it can look quiet—almost uneventful. But inside the studio, there’s often a constant negotiation happening between intuition, memory, control, and accident. 

When I first encountered Janna Watson’s paintings, I was struck by the tension in them. The work feels spontaneous and fluid, yet also deeply intentional. There’s a sense of movement—like something emotional or subconscious is surfacing through layers of colour and gesture. Undercurrent grew out of a curiosity about that space where thought and instinct meet. Rather than explaining the paintings or dissecting the process too literally, I wanted the film to feel closer to the act of painting itself: attentive to rhythm, texture, and the small decisions that accumulate into something larger.

Janna’s work is rooted in feeling, and it seemed important that the film approach it the same way. The goal wasn’t to decode the paintings, but to create a cinematic environment where viewers could experience the atmosphere of the studio and the quiet intensity of making something from nothing. In that sense, Undercurrent is less about documenting a finished artwork and more about observing the subtle forces that move beneath the surface of the creative process.