12:00 PM | Saturday, June 24

Flushing Filth in Canada - Film Program

MacKenzie Art Gallery - 3475 Albert St, Regina

FREE! COMPLIMENTARY LUNCH PROVIDED

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Canadian short film and video program followed by a conversation between curator Dr. Thomas Waugh and Wayne Baerwaldt, University of Regina.

Culled from the Queer Media Database Canada-Quebec – who’s mandate is to uncover, promote and bring back to life our queer moving-image artistic heritage – Dr. Thomas Waugh provides the following description for his short film and video program Flushing Filth in Canada.

How did Canadian LGBTQ film and video artists in the formative post-Stonewall and Epidemic-shaped decades process stigma, marginalization and underground desire? Many artists of those decades did so through the themes of filth, outrage and the abject. They focused on the specific iconographies of the toilet as a space of sexual exchange, trauma and performance. What does the archive of those artistic processings tell us about our history and about our identity struggles and imaginaries? And how did they relate to the emergence south of the border of an aesthetic of filth, trash, and camp beginning in the 1970s? This program of 6 bold and filthy films and videos honours this rich archive of 20th-century shorts.

After the screening, join Dr. Thomas Waugh in conversation with Wayne Baerwaldt as they discuss campy, trashy and filthy plots, scenarios and ideas used by filmmakers, queer or otherwise. The discussion will also broach such questions as:

• is humour and camp in film (and art generally) a way to forge identities that break down barriers and create access to subject matter that is difficult?
• how and why do transgressive and subversive depictions of human nature as seen in the work of John Waters, Bruce LaBruce and other Canadian artists create controversy? and why are we both attracted to and repelled by such depictions?
• how was the early work of Waters, LaBruce other Canadian artists telling (or not) of a time within queer politics and identity?

Minimum Charge No Cover

Cole and Dale, famous for their unflinching and endearing Hookers on Davie (1984, 86 min) started their collaboration at Sheridan College in the 1970s and already expressed an interest in sexual and social marginality in their early shorts: Cream Soda (1976) and Minimum Charge No Cover (1976), about Yonge Street sexual outlaws and the gritty 70s demi-monde. A rarely screened treat.

In Black and White

One of the handful of Canadian queer film masterpieces of the 1970s, In Black and White is an experimental short from the SFU film program, a manifesto of liberation politics, postmodern aesthetics, and defiant erotics. Narratively speaking, two young men, one married and the other an “out” seventies clone, meet in a public toilet and have hot sex, but they’re caught through video surveillance. McGarry stepped into the clone role when his actor for this student production didn’t show, and his straight cameraman played the married hottie with real conviction.

Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

Confusion, underlying meaning and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a “one night stand,” they generate unique sensations – mixed emotion, risk, and excitement. The film employs formal devices in a manner that is exceedingly simple, yet very effective. Its subject matter, sexuality and communication, gains depth and poignancy through the artist’s decision to shoot the film’s three scenes for projection in a “double screen” configuration.

You Taste American

An intertextual essay adapted from the mixed-media performance of the same name. Addresses the issues raised by the 1983 Orillia, Ontario, washroom mass arrests, where thirty-two men were charged with “indecent acts” following extensive video surveillance. Tennesse William’s Suddenly Last Summer meets Michel Foucault.

Hose

Mixing cyberporn and “basement porn” footage together, Hose juxtaposes the revolutionary promises of sexuality of the 70s with the cybersex reality of the 90s. This rich visual examination of queer sexuality would not be complete without its sly piss-take (literally) about the fun of watersports.

Le Voyage de l'Ogre

Paradis’s first work, Voyage de l’ogre (1981), an essay that connects the horror of Chicago serial killer John Gacy to testimonies of nubile young Montrealers on their experiences and fantasies of hustling, is his most socially conscious work. Presaging Paul Wong’s “Confused Sexual Views” and the decades-long Canadian obsession with male sex work (Rodrigue Jean’s Love in the Time of Civil War, Jacob Tierney’s Twist, LaBruce’s Hustler White, need I go on?).

Note: Tickets to John Waters talk and VIP Reception on June 24 will be available for purchase at this venue.