Film Categories: art & artists

Stripped

Forget everything you heard and enter the world that many know of but know very little about. STRIPPED is the personal, untold story of Phylicia Carty, also known as Mz Lady Ice, whose life took her in the direction of becoming one of the most revolutionary urban exotic dancers in the Toronto adult entertainment industry. The enticing documentary showcases the struggles and triumphs that come with being a female stripper in a contemporary world that is now gaining mainstream acceptance. A multi-award winning short film, STRIPPED has received a total of 4 awards, 8 nominations and 3 official selections in…
我的女儿 DAUGHTER

DAUGHTER explores an immigrant mother’s pain and worry about her transgender daughter and examines the perspective of a mother who may not understand her daughter, but cares for her deeply. The film celebrates transgender resistance, gender non-normativity, and the strength of the immigrant family across language and cultural boundaries.
Untitled

A performance film consisting of a string of five slow motion portraits of a young woman. Each portrait varies in length and gesture as her myriad expressions invite our gaze. With each action performed in dead silence, stretched to the limits of voyeuristic levels of comfort, the simple act of looking is made fragile. A curious exchange is established between spectator, creator, and subject through a careful appropriation and reframing of social media conventions and advertising iconography transposed into a cinematic space—pointing to a cycle of regressive media consumption.
The Writer

A lady writer goes to her favourite restaurant to write her new romance… will it be her own ?
BLU In YOU

Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and…
SENSORS

In the summers of 2017 and 2018 record breaking forest fires dominated British Columbia with the number of forest fires in 2018 exceeding the 2017 record. One key difference between the two years was the timing of the widespread outbreaks. In 2017 the BC interior was inundated by haze and smoke as of early June while in 2018 the haze and smoke didn’t engulf the landscape until late July. Up until then the temperatures were relatively mild with enough moisture to create light conditions that were some of the most interesting I’ve seen in years. As satisfying as the early…
Framing Agnes (short)

In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury. Starring Zackary Drucker (Transparent), Angelica Ross (Pose), Silas Howard (By Hook or By Crook), and Max Wolf Valerio (The Testosterone Files). “An incredible film that transforms the most difficult of archives and shows us critical trans study in action, on screen—I will be…
Small Fish

Laurie is an artist who wants nothing more than to become a professional painter. She paints beautiful fish but when her paintings don’t sell she is overwhelmed by the rejection and the feeling that she will never be successful. Losing her sense of self and artistic voice, this is when things get fishy. With the help of a fellow artist, she tries to find her way through this vast ocean too big for such a small fish.
TSSP

In T.S.S.P., the 11th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, CHRISTEENE Turns, Stares, Shakes and Poses through Toronto performance collective HOTNUTS’ mega-dosed acid ass cracked world in search of the one thing she really needs. Tha’ Dick.
Aktion Toilet

In ‘AKTION TOILET’, the 10th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, electro pulses lure CHRISTEENE back to the woods to amass sacred cults of Mystics and Queerdos against the darkness of the world as we know it.