Film Categories: Activism + Protest

  • Soy un ser cuyas raíces // I am a being whose roots

    Soy un ser cuyas raíces // I am a being whose roots reworks Jacques Madvo’s Countries & People: Venezuela to explore labour and migration. Taking the final words of the film’s voice-over as a starting point, Soy un ser cuyas raíces // I am a being whose roots pairs Madvo’s film footage with a text-based conversation with young Venezuelan literature scholar and language teacher Angel Said Dominguez Pinto. Dominguez Pinto relocated to Panama in 2014 to make a living teaching English, Spanish & German in Panama City after Venezuela’s economic collapse. Over e-mail, we co-authored a conversational text, exploring migration,…

  • Midnight at the Continental

    Toronto, 1955. In the heart of Chinatown, a new bar opens: The Continental. It’s dark, grimy, and attracts an unusual clientele. Local tabloids scream in 20-point font: “Sapphos overflow Chinatown!” The bar becomes the meeting place for two of Toronto’s marginalized communities: Chinese-Canadian men and lesbians living “the life” full time. Recounting this forgotten piece of Toronto queer history, artists Hortie and Reynolds tell the story of Toronto’s first long-standing lesbian bar using original shadow puppets, overhead projector animation and archival images. Pull a stool up to the bar and watch lesbians and Chinese men stand side by side, battling…

  • Meet Me Under the Clock

    “Meet Me Under the Clock” explores a little-known time in Toronto’s LGBTQ history when an underground Halloween tradition became an annual confrontation between an invisible gay community and a fascinated, often hateful public. “Meet Me Under the Clock” tells the story of Halloween at the St Charles Tavern, a Yonge Street gay bar, throughout the 1970s. Each year, thousands of straight spectators would gather to throw eggs and jeer at the men attending the bar’s annual drag party. This unknown Toronto history highlights the role that LGBTQ spaces play in providing sanctuary and community, the complicated relationship between the LGBTQ…

  • I AM! We Are Here!

    “I AM! We Are Here!” multimedia project documenting the vitality and spirit of Queer, Trans* and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color in the Bronx. Vision of I AM! Is a documentation concerning the lives of Queer, Trans* and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color in the Bronx. Document activist, students, educators, mothers, faith based practitioners, and various types of community members who are making a difference in their communities, their and other peoples lives. In response to unprecedented murders of Trans* individuals across the United States and in solidarity with Trans Lives Matter!, “I AM! We Are Here!” invites the viewer…

  • REBIRTH

    “A dance ritual which turns into recreation of the self.” Transformation is a dance ritual. With every move you are born again. With every little step, you cut the umbilical cord. With every turn, you create a new shell.

  • End Conversion Therapy

    A survivor of conversion therapy navigates the New York dating scene.

  • Bruce Eves In Polari

    BRUCE EVES IN POLARI is an intimate, upclose and personal portrait of Bruce Eves, the 2018 winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts – that country’s highest honour. Eves’ work has remarkable intrinsic value that also engages key aspects of culture and history. His story began in Toronto’s clique-riven avant-garde art scene in the mid-1970s. As practicing artist and Programming Director for CEAC (Centre for Experimental Art and Communication), among other activities Eves crafted socially-engaged performance art pieces that were shown in Canada, throughout Western and Eastern Europe, as well as the United States. This included…

  • Slumberparty 2018

    Slumberparty 2018 is a remake of a 1984 Super 8 film called Slumberparty made by the Positive Pornographers, a mostly queer collective of Toronto-based artists, activists and sex-workers. Commissioned by A-Space Gallery’s “Developing a Women’s Erotic Language on Film” workshop, Slumberparty was made as a direct intervention in Toronto’s feminist porn debates. They wrote, “we didn’t set out to make a work of art. We set out to make something that might turn us on. Join us for what one previewer called “Mary Poppins’ first lesbian orgy. Slumberparty screened twice in public in 1984 then disappeared until 2016, when the…

  • Copsi

    A young couple (Mojdeh and Reza) are hosting Reza’s old friend Edmon in their house. Mojdeh has always wanted to become a journalist for Boojga news network. Not willing to adapt to the reality distorting culture of media, she never gets accepted. Reza is studious but an unsuccessful film maker. From the beginning Edmon grows fond of Mojdeh who is a reclusive painter. After multiple attempts Edmon finally gets close to Mojdeh but realizing her rebellious personality backs away. Edmon leaves the country and the circumstances get worse for Reza and Mojdeh who both suffer from Melancholia. The story is…

  • Battle Cry

    At the oldest-running queer theatre in the world, Toronto’s most cerebral drag queen and “tragicomedienne” Pearle Harbour prepares to take the stage for her new show “Battle Cry: Songs Of Warfare & Gaiety”.