Film Categories: Law

  • Equal Justice Under Law

    Shot on June 26, 2015, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling on marriage equality, this documentary combines President Barack Obama’s speech about the ruling with video of the reaction in San Francisco. This short films draws the line between the struggles for civil rights and LGBTQ rights.

  • IF YOU MEET ME ON THE ROAD

    Performance intervention in response to the shooting death of Brazilian national and British resident Jean Charles de Menezes by London police in a tube station July 22, 2005 on suspicion of terrorist activity.

  • HOSER

    This video was constructed in response to my experience of sexual assault and linked to the data collection/research I was doing shortly thereafter in publicly accessible community discourses of sero-conversion (pozzing) fetish, which have since received some scholarly attention in the Academy in the Social Sciences in relation to HIV acquisition/prevention and Queer theory. This tape is a reflection upon ideas of disclosure, self-determination, self-loathing, and informal support networks.

  • camera settings

    exploring surveillance documents, the idea of leaked sex-tapes, hidden camera and sexual obsession

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Warning Shot

    One death. Three versions of the crime. James H. Wakasa, a 63-year-old Japanese American bachelor, was shot to death by military police at Topaz concentration camp during World War II. Was it justifiable homicide, an accidental fatality, or second-degree murder? The press said he was trying to escape, the shooter claimed it was a warning shot, the case file suggests he was killed while walking a dog. This experimental film essay uses the “Rashomon effect” to juxtapose the conflicting accounts detailing the circumstances and cause of Wakasa’s untimely death. Part of the Queer Camp Trilogy.

  • Watching the Detectives

    Immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, amateur detectives took to the internet chat rooms to try and find the culprits. Users on reddit, 4chan and other gathering spots poured over photographs uploaded to the sites, looking for any detail that might point to the guilt of potential suspects. Using texts and jpegs culled from these investigations, “Watching the Detectives” narrates the process of crowd-sourcing culpability. “Chris Kennedy’s latest offering is…a half-hour meta-doc about the online sleuthing surrounding the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013. Imagine ‘Patriot’s Day’ without Mark Wahlberg leading the charge. Instead, a steadfast…

  • PYOTR495

    “PYOTR495” is set one evening in present day Moscow. 16-year-old Pyotr is baited by an ultra-nationalist group known for their violent abductions and anti-gay attacks, bolstered by Russia’s LGBT propaganda law. But Pyotr has a dangerous secret his attackers could never have accounted for.