Film Categories: LGBTQ

  • Kissing Drew

    Inside a drab middle school in 1992, a sexually-confused eighth-grader attempts to regain his dignity after being bullied by a sex-obsessed ‘cool kid’ whom he privately fantasizes about.

  • Mindtease

    The accidental reveal of a burlesque dancer’s “true” identity leads to a moment of self-questioning for the audience, and for one voyeur in particular, some deeper self-exploration.

  • DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR!

    Using the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo, faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. Playing with the biography documentary form, DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR! brackets issues of voice / gender / representation as Stephen traces his westernization, the discovery and silencing of his voice, and people’s reactions in Singapore and North America. Reflecting on the “unsettling” quality of his voice, Stephen decided to exploit the…

  • Pigeon Hole

    Pigeon Hole comically expresses the filmmaker’s desire to set fire to the restrictive and reductive labels gays use to categorize one another and themselves, especailly via modern methods of hooking up such as online websites and apps. A proclamation of liberation from marginalizing stereotypes and sexual exclusvitiy, the video features labels and descriptors culled from online profiles paired with footage of pigeons and the filmmaker burning down a large birdhouse. The Inside Out LGBT Film Festival commissioned Pigeon Hole for the “In Your Pocket: What’s Your Sex?” project challenging selected filmmakers to shoot and create a short video work utilizing…

  • Finding a Place to Sleep

    Based on stories my grandmother told me, I re-imagine while working as a cleaner the experiences of my ancestors during the Holodomor (forced famine) in Ukraine during the Stalinist-Soviet era. The “film” image is re-invented through digital video to enact a sense of ambiguity between authenticity and fiction, as can also be present in the act of oral storytelling. This is one chapter in “Stories for a Future Generation,” a series of shorts which together tell the stories of my family’s and my own migrations, and the inter-generational impacts of those upon our lives and on those of our family’s…

  • Trigger Warning:*rape

    Trigger Warning: *rape offers an intimate discussion between two women about their experiences as sexual assault survivors who were raped by female partners.

  • Fluff Film

    This video work is an experiment in self-love. BDSM and sex as a solo venture towards healing, growth, and transformation. Facing insecurity, welcoming loneliness, building strength to continue on living and loving myself.

  • Dust

    Referencing Yayoi Kusama’s concept of self-obliteration, Dust is a memory document, a self-portrait in a moment one prefers to forget. Using techniques to erase portions of the image, the film is a mutating, disintegrating echo of the biblical references in The Weight of Snow. Dust references genesis; we are dust, and to dust we return. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Lion

    A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion explores the Chernobyl disaster and the nature of radiation, recollection, and personal history. Lion navigates atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and a cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amidst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. This conceptually arranged film album is composed of seven works on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. The series combines memory, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations…

  • BROKEN ANGEL (GEBROCHENGEL)

    In Frankfurt near St. Peter’s church on Klaus-Mann-Platz, there is a memorial with an angel sculpture (aka Frankfurter Engel) for the homosexual men and women persecuted and murdered during the Third Reich. 2013 was a tumultuous year for LGBT rights like the spike in hate crimes in the U.S. post-DOMA, and passing of anti-gay legislation worldwide (most notably Russia and India). On 6 May 2013, the anniversary of Marlene Dietrich’s death and 80th year past the Third Reich, Stephen explores the historical and ongoing queer struggle and gilded apology of monuments in a guerilla performance by colliding the Frankfurter Engel…