Genres: experimental
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Der Untermensch
Dedicated to the memory of the Second World War’s homosexual victims. This short contemporary dance film abstractly depicts the persecution of homosexuals at the hands of the Third Reich by establishing a parallel between incarceration in the camps and the physical confinement felt when freedom is suppressed.
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Saint-Rémi
Abandoned in the debris of a mine, a dancer is revived by the celestial energy pulsating within him. Filmed in Quebec’s former asbestos mine of Saint-Rémi-de-Tingwick, this short film features the artist’s ‘Tetrahedron’ iron sculpture in which he dances. Serving as both a prison and a pedestal, this sculpture symbolises humanity’s detrimental creations that both elevate and destroy. This duality is also echoed in the magnificent yet barren lunar landscape of the mine, which has remained sterile since its closure in 1968. Despite the desolation, ‘Saint-Rémi’ is an ode to revegetation, a hope that flora, like the dancer, will resurface…
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Sex is Sex
Sex is Sex is a new collaborative video series between Vivek Shraya and Christopher Sherman that playfully challenges assumptions about sexual roles and preferences based on appearance and gender.
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Mississauga Goddamn
Mississauga Goddam was conceived as an anthem and a love letter to Mississauga, the city Gibb grew up in as a gay teen in the 90s. Its somber tone acknowledges that while being a city of opportunity for some, Mississauga is also the traditional territory of indigenous people whose history is subject to erasure. With Mississauga Goddam Gibb also alludes to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam”, suggesting that suburbia is a battleground for LGBT equality.
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Karaoke
The home has changed. The palm oil trees have grown in endless symmetry. The landscape rusts and the nostalgia turns. KARAOKE is a homecoming story. BETIK returns to his village to help his mother with the karaoke a few years after the death of his father. During the day, he has also taken a job with his uncle making karaoke videos. KARAOKE is a story that takes you back home yet reminds you to go back where you came from. KARAOKE is a debut feature film about home and deception in a karaoke club within a palm oil plantation in…
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light in my eyes
A personal and poetic walk through light, love, and memories of a blind grandfather. Artist/filmmaker Christopher Wiersema considers his grandfather’s enigmatic and eloquent point of view while playing with his own. The film’s soundscape centers around a phone call with the artist’s grandmother, Rina Pullia, as she reflects on caregiving for her husband, Angelo, in Chicagoland.
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Serene Hues
Serene Hues, hand-processed, solarized, tinted, and toned, is a meditative journey into the tranquility and vibrant beauty of nature. The surprising and unexpected images created through process-driven filmmaking, which is improvisational and interactive, embody the wabi-sabi aesthetic of impermanence, incompleteness, and imperfection, emphasizing the creative process of producing the work.
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My Canada Train Journey
50-plus years after a memorable overnight Canadian train ride, Sandy McLennan boards regional and remote lines, with main line and public transit between them. This time shooting Double 8mm film, the same format he fell in love with while screening family home movies just for himself. What was he thinking?
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through the bushes and the trees, you’ll find me
“through the bushes and the trees, you’ll find me” intertwines the personal and political histories of Hanlan’s Point Beach, the site of Canada’s first pride gathering in the early 1970s. A hole punch serves as a symbolic peephole, reflecting the cruising areas on the beach that invite both spectatorship and participation. By situating the tender moments of queer affection amidst the vast body of water surrounding the Toronto islands, the film celebrates and interrogates the histories and spaces of queer love and resistance. This work was made by hole punching frame by frame using a cricut machine, then manually taping…
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longer than that, she said
A meditation on anticipatory loss, this film examines the artists relationship with grief and attempts to ground herself. This film was hand processed in cilantro, mint and tansy at the Film Farm Residency hosted by Phillip Hoffman. Dyed in turmeric and walnut and utilizing freezing film decay techniques.
