Programs
Thursday, June 7 / P1 / P2 /// Friday, June 8 / P3 / P4 /// Saturday, June 9 / P5 / P6 / P7 / P8
Saturday, June 9
- QUEER YOUTH
QCC9 - P5 - 1PM (76:43 min.) - SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS
A collection of films and videos that address the many faceted sides of being queer and young - class issues with respect to being homeless and queer, the difficult but necessary disclosing of sexual identity to friends and family, the terror and pleasure of sexual discovery and awakening; navigating the world as an HIV positive youth; and the tests along the way that force you to stand up, make a choice and ultimately a difference. Out on the Streets
Amy Siegel & Alex Abramovich, Canada, 2010, 11:40 min.
This short film explores LGBTQ youth homelessness in Toronto and the lack of support available. Several people's lived experiences are shared.Coming Out: My Year Time Limit
Noelle Duddridge, Regina/Canada, 2012, 15:40 min.
Director in attendance
It started out with a simple goal of coming out to everyone important in my life within the year. But when my best male friend responded to the news by stealing my father's gun, I fought to meet my deadline.Game Kiss
Paul Augusta, Indonesia, 2010, 9 min.
Peter and Marco are in Marco's room playing a video game. Then suddenly Marco leans in to kiss Peter. This segment details what happens when both boys realize that their long held feeling for their object of affection is reciprocated. They begin slowly exploring each other's lust while exploring each other's body and asking simple nervous questions about their feelings for each other.H(a)rd to Say
Miguel Gabaldon, USA, 2012, 13 min.
Two young urban dwellers meet on the streets of New York. With the sounds of the city as the soundtrack, we follow them as they walk and talk and flirt their way into the early evening. Things are going well, and reach a point where sharing turns intimate and honest, and sadly, ends what was an otherwise pleasurable situation. What is revealed challenges both the boys, but leads to a place of freedom, respect and possibly more.Swim
Jordan Tannahill, Canada, 2011, 2:56 min.
Haunted by his role in the death of his childhood friend, a filmmaker reflects on regret and loss, Animorphs and bjs.Change
Melissa Osborne & Jeff McCutcheon, USA, 2010, 24:27 min.
Jamie is an African-American teenager grappling with his sexual identity on the night Barrack Obama is elected president and Proposition 8 - the voter initiative to eliminate same-sex marriage - is passed. When one of his gang initiates the bullying of an openly gay classmate, Jamie uses his wits to try and prevent it, but when things don't go the way he predicted, he is forced to face his fears head on.- TRANSGENDER
QCC9 - P6 - 3PM (84:49 min.) - SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS
From a six year old who is very self and gender aware, to a senior citizen who only transitioned later in life, to a Muslim who for most of their life struggled to come to terms with their religious and gender identity - these stories and expressions reflect the many ways in which gender and gender identity are brought into and out of focus. A revealing of ideas about discovery, fluidity, acceptance, rejection, determination, resolve, change, image, wholeness, and arrival. Death of My Daughter
Leon Mostovoy, USA, 2010, 8:39 min.
"The idea for the project came from my mother, who, upon learning of my transition, announced to my family that I was dead to her, that her daughter was gone. In fact, that daughter of her creation had never existed. In a meta-sense, Death of My Daughter is about the role of gender, and gender roles, in contemporary U.S. society. This video represents the burial, or putting to rest, of the gender roles our parents/society have imposed upon us and illustrates our metamorphoses into the men we have become." - Leon MostovoyAudrey Superhero
Amy Jenkins, USA, 2010, 9 min.
"I wanted to be a boy when I got borned, you know, outta your tummy!" — Audrey, age 6. Audrey Superhero, an experimental documentary, explores the shifting terrain of gender identity. The film includes vividly charged discussions with Audrey, who insists that she is Superman, along with views of her obsessive role-playing during her daily life out in the "real" world. Playful and arresting, Audrey de-cloaks from Clark Kent to Superman, revealing her "secret identity" as a boy. She does push-ups, practices flying, and imagines "saving the police from the bad guy." She ruminates, "to have a girlfriend I have to be a boy," all the while drawing us into her state of transformation. The unscripted narrative was built through the collaboration of mother and daughter, with Audrey youthfully honest and willing to reveal her inner emotional state. She is open as only a six-year-old could be.Threadbare
Lucas Crawford, Canada, 2011, 2:53 min.
A big transgender body dons and sheds a closetful of sweaters at maximum speed, presenting a new look to the audience each time. Some of these looks are posed, while others are only askance, furtive, or sideways. In this flurry of fleece, flannel, and hoodie, the audience must remains unsure as to which view or style of the character - if any - is correct. Perhaps instead of identifying with any one style or image of self, he is indeed always in the midst of "changing."Narcissus
Coral Short, Canada, 2011, 2 min.
A young trans man notices himself, becomes transfixed with his image and starts flirting leading up to a tentative, yet hot kiss. Here we see this young man rediscovering himself in his new identity. Self-reflection becomes self-acceptance.Lady
Abbey Lambert, Canada, 2011, 4:23 min.
In an attempt to undo her gender identity a woman allows her experience with another woman to induce her transformation. Through her adaptation of ambiguity the woman rejects femininity. Mohammed to Maya (aka Rites of Passage)
Jeff Roy, USA, 2011, 22:12 min.
Mohammed to Maya (aka Rites of Passage) examines issues of transsexualism, religion, and traditionalism against the backdrop of a single person's dramatic journey. Mohammed to Maya follows one year in the life of Maya Jafer (formerly Mohammed Jafer), a 42 year-old South Asian Muslim from Chennai, India, as she makes her gender transformation from male to female, capturing her in times of vulnerability and resolution. Since she was a young boy, Maya devoted her life to Islam, and followed a conservative life of prayer and familial obligation. Throughout her transition, however, she has had to redefine her spiritual and cultural devotion, facing incredible resistance along the way.Au pays des esprits (Home of the Buffalo)
Rémy Huberdeau, Canada, 2009, 4:26 min.
Constructed from Canadian prairie archival images taken between 1920 and 1940, this film lyrically explores a son/daughter's relationship with his/her father and the family's relationship to their land.En bondes längtan (A farmer's desire)
Rebecka Rasmusson, Sweden, 2010, 13:45 min.
Knut is a transsexual farmer from southern Sweden who has lived his life in the wrong body. Now Knut wants to live her life fully as a woman. A Farmer's Desire is a warm, humourous film about longing and about finding the courage to stand up for who you really are.I'm Just Anneke
Jonathan Skurnik, USA/Canada, 2010, 11:20 min.
I'm Just Anneke is a portrait of a 12-year-old girl who loves ice hockey and has a loving, close-knit family. Anneke is also a hardcore tomboy and everybody she meets assumes she's a boy. The onset of puberty has created an identity crisis for Anneke. Does she want to be a boy or a girl when she grows up, or something in between? To give her more time to make a decision, her doctor has put her on Lupron, a hormone blocker that temporarily freezes her body in a pre-pubescent state. Despite rejection by her friends and struggles with suicidal depression, Anneke is determined to be true to herself and maintain a gender fluid identity that matches what she feels on the inside. I'm Just Anneke takes us into the heart of a new generation of children who are intuitively questioning the binary gender paradigm.Putting the "i" in Trans
steen star, Canada, 2012, 5:11 min.
On June 27, 2011, the Toronto Star newspaper ran an article titled "Gay Activism Makes Comeback". They just didn't exactly proof-read it. Filmed on location at the 2011 Trans Pride March in Toronto, Canada.- QCC9 - P7 - 7PM (79:53 min.)
- SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS
The odd, otherworldy, familiar and eloquent collide in this program that reflects on memory, places and faces past, beings that both haunt and inspire - that we hold onto or hide from - and present reality that prompts us to connect with ourselves through things and bodies no longer. The House
Nicole Chung, Canada, 2011, 7:05 min.
After a breakup, a woman starts a relationship with someone who used to live in her house - but can she really escape her last relationship?Diego Alonso
Axel Ranisch, Ricardo Zamora, Heiko Pinkowski, Janusch Kesy, Germany, 2011, 23 min.
Two heavyset anchorites lead a lonesome, orderly life in the north Friesland landscape. They have not exchanged words for years, their life is reduced to the necessary and always the same. One day a new member joins their family. The harmony is gone.Goodbye
Daniel MacIntyre, Canada, 2010, 3:46 min.
Incorporating meditations on male sexuality and personal exchanges, "Goodbye" travels through physical memory to reveal the marrow that grows beneath.Paper World
Blair Fukumura, Canada, 2011, 5:55 min.
On an early fall evening, under the watchful eye of a full moon, a child's art project; a little boy made of bits of paper with sequins for eyes, comes loose and falls down off the front of a refrigerator onto the kitchen floor below. As the paper boy begins his wordless journey through the twilight kitchen (to Debussey's Claire de Lune), he begins to fall apart, and winds up in the deepest recesses of the junk drawer - that pergatory like middle ground where useless yet sentimental things reside before being relegated to the garbage dump. There, he encounters a little Japanese paper doll who has been buried under a tsunami of forgotten and outdated technology, and in helping her escape, is rewarded with an origami gift she has fashioned herself, a set of paper wings to return him home.My Father, Maria Callas and Me
Annette Clough, Canada, 2011, 7:07 min.
A daughter turns a queer eye on her father's life. Set in Jamaica in the early half of the last century, this documentary investigates a life through old photos, film clips and memories, searching for clues that may indicate a queer sensibility. It is a tribute to her father's influence on her.The Reconstitution
Alain Pelletier, Canada, 2010, 33 min.
An abstract white space. An elderly woman, naked, wrapped in transparent plastic. A shoot for a video installation. The filmmaker talks to her, gives her instructions, observes her reactions. Unknowingly, he is filming a metaphor: that of her imminent death. Many years later, he re-enacts the shoot, aided by two professional lip-readers who decipher the comments made by the woman during the filming. Slowly, an intimate dialogue emerges as her memories transcend the superimposed layers of staging.- QCC9 - P8 - 9PM (86:30 min.)
- Feature film preceded by short video.
DESCRIPTIONS :: lesbian; feminism; art; media; experimental; parody; documentary; music; celeibrity; identity politics; humour; gender; transgender; relationships. New Report Artist Unknown
Wynne Greenwood & K8 Hardy, USA, 2006, 16:30 min.
The second installment of the collaborative project New Report, an ongoing series of performances and videos, Artist Unknown features K8 Hardy (founder of the queer feminist art collective LTTR) and Wynne Greenwood (of Tracy and the Plastics) playing Henry Irigaray and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill, and anchor and roving correspondent for WKRH, a feminist TV news station whose tagline is "pregnant with information." Based on documentation of a live, digital communication in real time between Greenwood at Foxy Production Gallery and Hardy on the street in New York. A third artist is missing in this "breaking news" report on bad painting, the situation of women in the contemporary art world and the problem of communication without a community. -- Kunsthalle Zurich, VDBThe Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Marie Losier, France, 2011, 70 min.
Genesis P-Orridge has been one of the most innovative and influential figures in music and fine art for the last 30 years. A link between the pre- and post-punk eras, he is the founder of the legendary groups COUM Transmissions (1969-1976), Throbbing Gristle (1975-1981), and Psychic TV (1981 to present), all of which merged performance art with rock music. Celebrated by critics and art historians as a progenitor of "industrial music", his innovations have transformed the character of rock and electronic music while his prodigious efforts to expand the boundaries of live performance have radically altered the way people experience sound in a concert setting. But that's just the preamble to the story. Defying artistic boundaries, Genesis has re-defined his art as a challenge to the limits of biology. In 2000, Genesis began a series of surgeries in order to more closely resemble his love, Lady Jaye (née Jacqueline Breyer), who remained his other half and artistic partner for nearly 15 years. It was the ultimate act of devotion, and Genesis's most risky, ambitious, and subversive performance to date: he became a she in a triumphant act of artistic self-expression. Genesis called this project "Creating the Pandrogyne". Influenced, like so much of Genesis _ work, by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs _ _Cut Ups _, it was an attempt to deconstruct two individual identities through the creation of an indivisible third. This is a love story, and a portrait of two lives that illustrate the transformative powers of both love and art. Marie Losier brings to us the most intimate details of Genesis's extraordinary, uncanny world. In warm and intimate images captured handheld, Losier crafts a labyrinthine mise-en-scene of interviews, home movies, and performance footage. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye documents a truly new brand of Romantic consciousness, one in defiance of the daily dehumanization of the body by the pervasive presence of advertising and pornography, conveying beauty, dignity and devotion from a perspective never before seen on film.
"Losier has made a quietly revolutionary work that treats a pair of people on the fringes with the decency all humans deserve."
Keith Uhlich – TimeOut New York