Soul Cages is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Phillip Barker and released in 1999.
Inspired by the old legend of The Soul Cages, in which the souls of drowned sailors are trapped in clay pots at the bottom of the ocean, the film adapts it to the present day by depicting the interactions between a photographer (Susanna Hood) and the clerk (Srinivas Krishna) processing her film in a one-hour photo lab, around the philosophical question of whether the souls of photographic subjects are trapped in the image.
[6] It was part of a retrospective screening of Barker's short films in 2018, in conjunction with the publication of Mike Hoolboom's book Strange Machines: The Films of Phillip Barker.
The other films in the series were I Am Always Connected, A Temporary Arrangement, Malody, Regarding, Dredger and Shadow Nettes.
The series was screened in 2018 at FNC[7] and the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and in 2019 at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.