Programs
Thursday, June 7 / P1 / P2 /// Friday, June 8 / P3 / P4 /// Saturday, June 9 / P5 / P6 / P7 / P8
Friday, June 8
- QCC9 - P3 - 7PM (84:53 min.)
- SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS
This collection of experimental films and videos range from spare visual contemplations, ruminations, and assemblage to playful and well textured expressions in sound, sight and spirit. AGENDA
Kim Kielhofner, Canada, 2011, 5:02 min.
AGENDA is a chapter in the series foursquare, a retelling of the same story four times, taking a different perspective each time.AGENDA follows clues to a mysterious woman and her continuous re-invention.TIME FOR AIRPORTS
Eduardo Menz, Canada, 2009, 16 min.
Through precise choreography of exterior movement and interior commotion, a montage of contrasting visual and aural moments creates a minimally-composed travelogue as a reflection upon the airport as a unique microcosm of the 21st century.IF There Be Thorns
Michael Robinson, USA/ Nicaragua, 2009, 13:24 min.
A dark wave of incest and magic burns across the tropics, forging a knotted trail into the black hole. Taking its title from the V.C. Andrews novel (a sequel to Flowers In The Attic), and weaving together texts from Shirley Jackson, William S. Burroughs, and Stevie Nicks, the film constructs a collaged narrative of three star-crossed siblings searching for one another across the unstable landscapes of their respective exiles.I Want Your Love
Dotan Moreno, Canada, 2012, 1:33 min.
Director in attendance
I Want Your Love is a minimalist animated piece that deals with tabooed issues like gender, desire, brutality, love and humuliation. In a sequence of static provocative images, it talks about hiding, objectification and sexual identity in non-western countries/societies. It presents the naked male body as vulnerable and aggressive at the same time.School Drama
Anne Golden, Canada, 2011, 4:17 min.
Someone is prowling the hallways.POSTFACE
Frederic Moffet, Canada, 2011, 7:30 min.
In a celebrity-obsessed culture, filmmakers often exploit the downfall of a star to amplify the emotional undertones of the fictional films in which they perform. POSTFACE takes a look back at the filmography of Montgomery Clift whose private life and career spiral downward after a 1956 car crash that left his face scarred and partially paralyzed. Like an actor without a face, the video is an exploration of obsolescence, produced by means of analog tape manipulations.I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends
Chris Dupuis, Canada, 2010, 3:07 min.
A performance of Rejection; The monologue about an ambiguous experience of rejection is composed entirely with text from the reality television show "America's Next Top Model" organized according to the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance).Paradise Disko
Tasman Richarson, Canada, 2010, 5:15 min.
Puts the k in Disko like Magick. Illustrates the shift to the dark side of the dance floor and the end of the party as it was once known. Welcome to a world of hipster early adoption, endless irony, and rampant cultural entropy, all for the lulz of course. Music by Proxxy. Commissioned by Toronto's Nuit Blanche 2010. Curated as part of a collaborative installation with Derek Mainella at The Social.The Nutrient Express
George Kuchar, USA, 2010, 11:45 min.
A trip to Winnipeg introduces the viewer to moments of Canadian cuisine and to the easily digestible tidbits that make up the WNDX Film/Video Festival. Come join the movie buffs as they beef up on eye candy and tummy truffles, all the while indulging in a masticating miasma of minutia that's easy to swallow. Wash it all down with some river views and Mr. Coffee secretions and you'll get a taste of the treats that await all who head north to appease the more southerly rumblings of the human anatomy.The Magus
Jaimz Asmundson, Canada, 2011, 12 min.
The Magus is a multi-format, process-based experimental film that explores the root of artistic creation. The film documents visual artist, C. Graham Asmundson's body of work over a rigorous six-month period.
Filmmaker, Jaimz Asmundson, Graham's son, uses cinematography and editing as magical weapons to ritualistically birth, destroy and resurrect his father's work. Through psychedelic imagery and machine-gun editing, the resulting film is a stylized, hyper-kinetic, cinematic manifestation of the Asmundsons' personal exploration of occult ceremonies and experiences. Working this uncommon practice, the father/son team explore mind-altered states and invoke unnatural resurrections; where unforeseen demons and other spiritual forces are often released.Wildblood
David Jones, USA, 2009, 5 min.
Wildblood is the third piece in a trilogy of animated shorts by Los Angeles artist David Jones. It takes its inspiration from queer zines and the San Francisco homocore music scene of the early 90s. The artist was a member of the seminal band Fagbash and considers the piece reminiscent of the type of making indicative of this period. It is constructed entirely of xerox collages re-photographed and animated digitally.- QCC9 - P4 - 9PM (106:42 min.)
- Feature film preceded by short films and videos.
DESCRIPTIONS :: gay; sex; magick; experimental; documentary; porn; narrative; relationships; art. First Comes Love
Evie Leder, USA, 2011, 5 min.
First Comes Love is a short experimental video (also meant as a looped installation) that captures images of two men in love, naked in bed. Shot on super 8 film, the silent grainy black and white images reflect a tender and intimate moment between two lovers…and their cats.AQUARIUS
Jody Jock, USA, 2012, 10:42 min.
Both tender and hardcore, Aquarius follows a young man as he uses magick to manifest the love he desires.In Their Room - San Francisco
Travis Mathews, USA, 2010, 20 min.
In Their Room (2009-present) is an on-going multi-city documentary series about gay men, bedrooms, intimacy and sex. The film veers into the bedrooms of eight different men who engage in everything from the most banal to the most erotic. Complimenting the revealing nature of their everyday activities are confessioanal interviews about fantasies, turn-ons and vulnerabilities. We never leave their bedrooms, but this is unmistakebly San Francisco of the present.
DIRECTORS NOTE
The throughline of the series highlights the ways in which gay men in disparate cultures deal with connection, intimacy and loneliness in the modern world. In an age of accelerated gay acceptance and visibility, it's shocking that many of these stories are being left undocumented. My inspiration for the series came largely out of such a frustration. If representations of my life -and that of my friends- were largely going unseen in the media I reasoned that I should be recording these stories before they were lost or forgotten. I do this as best I can focusing on what feels authentic, modern and uncensored. How this is documented will altar from the original template (showing men alone in their bedrooms as if no one is watching and interviewing them in bed) so each episode is reflective of the city I'm inhabiting and the people who are being documented. For example, the ways in which gay men find closeness in Tokyo or Istanbul will likely be at odds with how it’s commonly experienced in Berlin. The uniqueness of any given city and its culture will impact a range of decisions from the subjects I work with, the shots I chose, to the pacing of the film and the stories that are told. Moving forward, I see this as an increasingly collaborative project between myself and the main subjects. Once I have their trust and willingness to document their lives, I will put them in real life situations -all of which highlight some cord of intimacy, connection or loneliness- asking them to respond according to their own principles and ways of being. This is demonstrated somewhat in the Berlin episode where two real life strangers meet for a hook up. The most important key with any episode or any city, is in finding compelling "characters" who are willing to participate and give so much of themselves. I treat my subjects with great respect and I think this is reflective in the work. At its best, I think the series has the potential to comfort and heal viewers who are not accustomed to seeing representations of modern gay masculinity that feel authentic or reflective of their own lives.I Want Your Love
Travis Mathews, USA, 2011, 71 min.
Jesse struggles to take responsibility for himself after a decade of treading water in freewheeling San Francisco. On his final night in the City, friends and ex-lovers gather for a going away party that promises to heighten Jesse's already bittersweet feelings about leaving.
"A filmmaker of refreshing honesty, Travis Mathews is a new voice giving queer cinema a much needed injection of emotional intimacy."
John Cameron Mitchell, director of Short Bus
"Mathews is pushing the bar even further by blurring the lines between narrative and pornographic language..."
MUD Magazine
"I Want Your Love bristles with eroticism and emotional honesty. Jesse Metzger and Brenden Gregory are not typical porn stars. They're scruffy, tattooed indie guys, charming and occasionally awkward. The sex is interrupted by laughter, bouts of wrestling, and subtle gestures of negotiation. Certainty never factors into the scene. Seemingly, there is nothing coordinated or choreographed about their actions..."
SEXIS Magazine
"Best Sex Scene of 2010"
Manhunt Daily