Film Categories: LGBTQ

  • Nice

    Yet another girl sitting by the phone waiting for a roving boy to ring. The same old story – until she meets his latest girlfriend…

  • Nice Girls Don’t Do It

    “Nice Girls Don’t Do It” is a not-quite-conventional documentary about female ejaculation. While referencing some of the codes of pornography (i.e. out-of-focus, leather, explicit close-ups), the film clearly works against conventional pornography in its use of black and white film, text, and in its positioning of the spectator. The film serves less as a treatise than as an invitation to its spectators to fill in the gaps created by the film – to query, challenge, investigate, object, corroborate, perhaps inveigh against, but ultimately to create a space for others to speak about a part of female experience long-shrouded in silence.

  • Nion

    This film shows the odyssey of a baby-like alien, Nion (performed by mime artist Ian Wallace), who lands on earth and discovers fame, fortune, love, and shopping. As a creature from outer space mimicking the behaviour of human beings, Nion conveys the arbitrary nature of gender roles, as well as the dangers of identifying too closely with these models, for instance when Nion explores the personae of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. An inventive film dealing with stereotypes of gender and desire.

  • No Sad Songs

    This is the director’s cut of the first Canadian film on the subject of AIDS. In 1985-86 it was featured in festivals and theatres around the world. “No Sad Songs” attracted much critical attention for its sardonic dramatic performances which are interwoven throughout the documentary footage. The film centres on Jim Black, 37, and his views on the premature death in store for him. Catherine Hunt, who has a brother in the U.S. with the illness, speaks with remarkable emotion of the values such a crisis brings out in families and friends. An important film to document the Toronto gay…

  • Oblivion

    “‘Oblivion’ successfully blends elements from both the poetic and diary modes. In the process, Tom Chomont has created one of the few truly erotic works of cinema.” – J.J. Murphy, “Reaching Toward Oblivion,” Millennium Film Journal No. 3 “Lost in the heat of a masturbatory revel, light pours off the skin of the filmmaker, finally coalescing in an associative montage that relates the body of his hustler/lover with the world outside. ‘Oblivion’ is very much a ‘home movie,’ enclosed between the four walls of a New York tenement, it describes a lover ‘s encounter.” – Mike Hoolboom

  • Optic Nerve

    Of this film Hammer says, “It is about the fragility of both film and life as the sterility of a nursing home is memorized with veils and faded patterns of the past by the filmmaker imagining what her grandmother is seeing.” The film won first prize in several film festivals, was chosen for the 1987 Whitney Museum of Art Biennial and was premiered at the London International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1988.

  • Out In the Garden

    Set in and around the house and garden of a middle-aged upstate New York academic, Grenier’s intimate experimental documentary portrait explores, in an innovative form, the thoughts and feelings of one man dealing with AIDS. Awards: Michael Moore Award, Best Documentary, 16th Atlanta Film & Video Festival 1992; Cash Award at the 1992 Edison Black Maria Film & Video Festival; Cash Award at the 23rd Sinking Creek Film Celebration Part of the TALKING PORTRAITS series.

  • P.M.S. (Positioning My Sexuality)

    A self-reflective escape investigating both contemporary society’s portrayal of the male role model and the position of the filmmaker. Inspired by discourse surrounding the nature and function of societal roles and media representation, “Positioning My Sexuality” challenges conventions affecting all males.

  • Performance by Jack Smith, A

    In October of 1984, the highly acclaimed New York artist, Jack Smith, came to Toronto for a week long performance/Halloween ritual at the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre. This performance, true to Smithesque form, went by three different titles: “Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application,” “Brassieres of Uranus,” and “Impacted Croissants From Outer Space.” Accompanied by the music of Yma Sumac, this short piece remains the last film documentation of this historic event.

  • Private Flowers

    In 1832, a Canadian Infantryman was hanged for making love with another man. The victim’s rank was Private, and his name was Flowers. Commissioned by Toronto History Museums’ Artist Mentorship Showcase: Pride with Mentor Ashley Mckenzie-Barnes with additional support from the open space residency programme at the National Ballet, TD Bank, Pride Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council. Created as part of Awakening with Toronto History Museums Private Flowers is part of a series of art projects by Black, Indigenous and artists of colour, operating under the principles of anti-oppression, anti-colonialism and anti-racism and is part of the City’s efforts…