Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Difficult Love

    “Difficult Love” is an intimate, thought-provoking portrait of internationally celebrated South African lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi, and her highly personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today. The film features interviews with Muholi as well as with her friends, colleagues and peers, and provides a compelling overview of the artist, her life and her work. This poignant documentary takes us behind the façade of art making and shares with us the highly political environment Muholi must navigate in order to bring her lush photographs to light. Winner Best Short Film – Audience Award, Africa in the…

  • Free Man

    When Michael’s partner of thirteen years, Charlie, dies unexpectedly, he is forced to work with his estranged mother-in-law, Celine, to plan his funeral. When they have a difference of opinion, Michael finds himself embroiled in a power struggle for the right to plan the memorial the way Charlie wanted. While Michael begins to dive deep into his psyche to keep the memory of Charlie alive, Celine turns to the legal system, stripping Michael of Charlie’s burial rights. Michael must use his music and the power of their union to confront his grief and mourn his dead lover.

  • Atlantiques

    Sitting by the campfire, Serigne, a young man from Dakar, tells his two friends the story of his sea voyage as a stowaway. “Melancholic and mysterious, the film urgently and elegantly addresses the perils of illegal migration” (Andréa Picard, TIFF Wavelengths). Tiger Award for Best Short Film, Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2010; No Violence Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2011.

  • Sex On Wheels (short)

    “Sex On Wheels” tells the secret history of San Francisco’s sex workers. Interweaving Super 8 footage of a living history bike tour/theater piece (think Colonial Williamsburg, with whores) with archival film and photographs, the film tells the story of a city’s forgotten residents: an ex-slave who became a wealthy procuress, a cross-dressing 1940s lesbian gigolo, a madam who became mayor, a gang of transgender teen hustlers who rioted for their rights, a radical feminist hooker/assassin, and a posse of anarchist strippers who took over a peep-show. 38-minute version also available, see “Sex on Wheels (demi-feature)”

  • Bol (Speak!)

    A cyclist meets a stranger in the market. A boy waits for his mother to return home. A man wakes up to find that his face is being stolen by shadows. Three separate encounters become the departure point for “Bol (Speak!),” a short dramatic experimental triptych on the nature of violence. Inspired by the Pakistani Marxist poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem Bol, and drawn from real events, the film uses still photographs, puppets and folk dance to comment on the increasing ubiquity and tenor of violence in South Asia. It is a gradually escalating experience of violence. All three chapters…

  • Sex On Wheels (demi-feature)

    “Sex On Wheels” tells the secret history of San Francisco’s sex workers. Interweaving Super 8 footage of a living history bike tour/theater piece (think Colonial Williamsburg, with whores) with archival film and photographs, the film tells the story of a city’s forgotten residents: an ex-slave who became a wealthy procuress, a cross-dressing 1940s lesbian gigolo, a madam who became mayor, a gang of transgender teen hustlers who rioted for their rights, a radical feminist hooker/assassin, and a posse of anarchist strippers who took over a peep-show. 12-minute version also available, see “Sex on Wheels (short)”

  • Bus Pass, The

    A woman sees the girl of her dreams on the train home from work. Will she dare take the plunge and ask for her number? Winner – Audience Award for Best Lesbian Short at Hamburg International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (2011)

  • Au Plus Proche

    “Au Plus Proche” is a meditation on mourning, in which a gay actor, who has tragically lost his lover, makes a radical life decision while performing Molière on stage.

  • Verona

    Inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, “Verona” is the story of two young lovers separated by their rival fraternities. Set in a small college town wherein young men are groomed for corporate success in All-American hyper competitive fashion, “Verona” presents the fate of star-crossed lovers in a society that condemns the very nature of their love.

  • Death of My Daughter

    “The idea for the project came from my mother, who, upon learning of my transition, announced to my family that I was dead to her, that her daughter was gone. In fact, that daughter of her creation had never existed. In a meta-sense, “Death of My Daughter” is about the role of gender, and gender roles, in contemporary U.S. society. This video represents the burial, or putting to rest, of the gender roles our parents/society have imposed upon us and illustrates our metamorphoses into the men we have become.” – Leon Mostovoy