Tuesday, November 21, 2006

• Knowing Me, Knowing You
  We all have a story to tell. These tales offer intimate and poignant glimpses, inside the artist's mind.
  
  
  • A Girl Named Kai
    (Kai Ling Xue, Canada, 2005, video, 9 min.)
    The director opens her diary to reveal her personal interactions, passion, secrets and dreams.
    
    
  • Hello, Thanks
    (Andy Blubaugh, USA, 2006, video, 8 min.)
    Hello, Thanks is equal parts diary and documentary - covering the film-making experience as much as the director's experience of looking for love in personal ads.
    
    
  • The Making of a Hybrid Male
    (Spy Dénommé-Welch, Canada, English and Algonquin and Ojibwa w/ English Subtitles, 2005, video, 23 min.)
    A tranny boi goes up north to tell his family that he's started testosterone. This is his survival guide.
    
    
  • Gay?
    (Jean-Gabriel Périot, France, French w/ English Subtitles, 2000, video, 2 min.)
    I'm gay. I'm a fag. I'm proud.
    
    
  • It's OK Michael
    (Evan Tapper, Canada, 2005, video, 2 min.)
    The artist goes back in time to help a scared high school bully.
    
    
  • Smudge
    (Gail Maurice, Canada, 2005, video, 13 min.)
    In a busy city, three First Nations women celebrate their right to worship in their own ways.
    
    
  • My Path (Meskanahk)
    (Kevin Burton, Canada, Cree and English w/ English Subtitles, 2005, video, 10 min.)
    In this story of one man's journey off a Cree reserve, we see the motivations that mark his path and the questions, regrets and fears that have arisen along the road from childhood to adulthood.
    
    
  • Love and Torment: Albrecht Becker
    (Rosa von Praunheim, Germany, German w/ English Subtitles, 2005, video, 14 min.)
    A candid and revealing portrait of Albrecht Becker, who survived years of imprisonment by the Nazis under Paragraph 175. During this period he began giving himself tattoos, creating a canvas across his entire body that represented the physical and emotional pain of his imprisonment and the fulfillment of his masochistic desires.
    
    

• Machulenco
  (David Blanco, Spain, Spanish w/ English Subtitles, 2004, video, 15 min.)
  A writer kidnapped by the Argentinean military requests a last wish before his execution. Will it be granted?
  
  
• Unveiled (Fremde Haut)
  (Angelina Maccarone, Germany, German and Farsi w/ English Subtitles, 2005, 35mm, 97 min.)
  
  Director Angelina Maccarone (Everything Will Be Fine) returns with Unveiled, a stunningly beautiful portrait of an Iranian refugee struggling between her survival in small-town Germany and her love for a local woman.
  
  Fariba, persecuted in Iran because of a lesbian relationship, flees to Germany but her application for asylum is rejected. When her fellow inmate, a man named Siamak, commits suicide, Fariba assumes his identity and is sent to a refugee camp in a small German village. At first her survival seems assured, but the strain of upholding her male disguise in the cramped refugee quarters means a single mistake could blow her cover - at great personal peril. In order to pay for forged documents, Fariba takes an illegal job in a sauerkraut factory, where she is harassed about not wanting to shower with the boys and about being Iranian. The only saving grace is a German woman named Anne, to whom she grows close - dangerously close - as Anne begins to suspect Fariba's true identity.
  
  Striking cinematography and remarkable performances work together to tell a captivating story that reveals the struggles of refugees, the confines of gender and the power of love.