Film Categories: sexuality

  • 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 Choice

    “No Choice” is a short documentary that deals with the abortion issue and how it relates to women living in poverty. Five women, ranging in age from twenty to forty-five, speak about the lack of choice available to poor people and how, because of their poverty, their reproductive capabilities are often controlled by extraneous factors. Part of “Five Feminist Minutes.”

  • 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

  • Orientation Express, The

    By animating three decades of LIFE Magazine, “The Orientation Express” humorously guides us through the sexism of North American media. Hosts such as The Quaker Oats Man, Colonel Sanders, and The Kool Aid Jug explore “the feminine mystique.” This film highlights how attitudes towards women have changed and works to eliminate stereotypes which still persist today. “A technically polished animated film…devoted to an amusingly didactic re-expose of the horrors of sexual stereotyping, circa 1950.” – The Globe and Mail

  • 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.

  • Pearl Mad

    Fantasy is her only refuge as Mae spends the last day of her life at the Gothic Insemination Laboratory, where she works and struggles with her role as a “passive collaborator.” An exoticised portrait of a WASP hunted by Bees. In a private allegory for despair, the protagonist, Mae, unfolds a personal mythology of sex and honey in Pearl and Glitter. Vowing never to return, Mae embarks on an absurd Suicide-Quest with the “good seeds” of man!

  • Perestroyka

    Shot in the spring of 1992 in St. Petersberg and Moscow, “Perestroyka” is a collage of conversations with Russian people, mostly artists, about life in Russia and about their hopes and fears for the future of their country. The position of artists and filmmakers in contemporary Russian society, the position of women in the new Russia, problems of unemployment, the politics of sexuality, and the erosion of traditional values are debated and discussed. Appearing in the tape are (in order of appearance): Sergey Letou Jazz Band, Vladik Mamyshev Monroe (performance artist), Bella Matveeva (painter), Alexandr Sakurov (film director), Liubov Polga…

  • 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.