Film Categories: Community
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UUFO
“UUFO” consists of six short chapters/stories. Each chapter describes a memory. The film deals with conflicting interpretations of China from the 1960s onwards, contrasting past generations’ stories with my own generation’s interpretations. UUFO stands for Universal Unidentified Flying Object.
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Royal Jelly
The film begins in abstraction, then we are greeted by a drag queen that we follow down the rabbit hole to meet the menagerie of people that have become her community.
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Reinventing the Unconventional: The Hearn Generating Station
Nestled next to downtown Toronto looms the abandoned Hearn Generating Station. Thirty years after it was decommissioned, art director Jorn Weisbrodt envisioned an entire arts festival, Luminato, taking place in the Hearn. We hear about the challenges of reinventing such an unconventional space, from politics to the will of the Toronto people.
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Flash Flood
Deep within a dream, a cataclysmic flood washes over the planet, and reveals three unique perspectives on gender and identity. The film is animated by volunteer transgender artists and animators from across the globe.
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HOME MADE
Home Made is an intimate, contemplative portrait of two queer tattoo artists navigating an industry traditionally dominated by white, straight, cisgender males. The film weaves together the parallel narratives of Jasmine, a shop owner in Philadelphia, and sally, a stick-and-poke artist in Brooklyn, through their trials and triumphs.
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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…
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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…
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Flâneurs – Street Rambles
Between film projects and following the birth of his daughter, a Canadian in Paris (Matthew Lancit) must confront his slacker lifestyle and decide if there is something in it worth passing on to the next generation, or if he is better off getting a job. In search of the remaining traces of flâneurs (19th Century wanderers of Paris), he takes his daughter on a series of poetic strolls in which he assumes the role of a contemporary flâneur and crosses the path of people who help reveal the relevance of such a figure today. In the movement back and forth…
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On the Line
“On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…
