Film Categories: Love + Hate

  • Queer Camp Trilogy

    The Queer Camp Trilogy is a series of experimental films exploring the hidden dimensions of queer Japanese American wartime history. This trilogy, made up of Looking For Jiro (2011), Warning Shot (2016), and On the Line (2018), was inspired by first-generation Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by the US government during World War II. These subjects left subtle yet discernible traces of same-sex intimacy or gender nonconformity in the archive, despite the enormous pressure put upon Japanese Americans to accept their imprisonment quietly, prove their patriotic loyalty, and smile for Ansel Adams during their unlawful imprisonment. I approached their enigmatic…

  • Birthday Suit

    A remake of the seminal Canadian feminist art tape by Lisa Steele. Featuring Lexi Tronic.

  • When I See You

    Tired of putting her girlfriend ahead of her stifled dance career, Kira accepts an opportunity to be a featured dancer in New York City. But when her zealous girlfriend, Bea, unexpectedly opposes the change, Kira must hastily choose between her relationship or her career. Resentment and loyalty collide as Kira and Bea discover what they’re willing to sacrifice for their careers and not for each other.

  • Life and the Art of Lying

    Charlie, a bubbly queer artist, heads into a new year surrounded by her closest friends. But her plans for carefree fun are dashed when she is suddenly confronted with a health crisis. Not wanting to burden those she loves with her news, Charlie lies repeatedly to cover up the severity of her situation. With no easy cures at hand, Charlie turns to her medical doctor, Dr. Simone, and chooses to secretly pursue a renegade solution for her illness. As Charlie’s feelings for her best friend Mara grow stronger, the two women are both forced to confront the painful truths they…

  • Breathing Through a Straw

    When a hookup ends in homicide, Parker decides to confront the man who abused him as a child. Inspired by a true story, “Breathing Through a Straw” explores the consequences of secrets. It is Canadian theatre director Leigh Rivenbark’s debut film, starring Christian Lloyd (Emmy Award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale, Maps to the Stars, American Gods).

  • Bonsai

    A once joyful teenager, Frida, a girl with a head full of leaves is faced with challenges after losing her mother, Lu. Frida has a head full of leaves to depict the metaphor of the relationship humans have with nature to how parents treat their children. Nature has to be taken care of in order for it to beautifully develop. Unfortunately, today, individuals today are sometimes not aware of the slow but terrible destruction they are capable of. Children on the other hand need nurturing from their parents to have a good upbringing both mentally and physically. But due to…

  • Reading Between the Lines

    Reading the replies to a personal ad she has placed, a woman imagines herself in relationships with three different men. The film uses both layering and fragmentation to weave a web of associations and create a dynamic and fast-moving flow of images and events. Quick flashbacks, like momentary thoughts, accumulate. The reading voice is the constant, a soft steady interior voice around which the images dance and leap. The most dramatic moments of a given scenario are played out in a realistic fashion, and some scenarios, differently imagined, are repeated with each of the men: the restaurant, the dance, the…

  • Sworded Love

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of star-crossed swordsmen are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from a stray reel of a 35mm kung fu action film.

  • Wayward Emulsions

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from stray reels of 35mm film. Winner, Experimental Short Grand Jury Prize, Slamdance Festival 2019

  • 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…