Program

With knees buckled, tongues frozen and butterflies trapped in our tummies; dating often feels like a blockade of hesitation. Here viewers are granted access to a very personal story of a genderqueer/trans person's entry into the dating world. Using collage, stop-motion photography and animation, Dating Sucks lightheartedly traverses thick topics like Internet dating, misgendering anxieties and understanding one's multiple subjectivities.

An excerpt from Cho's forthcoming experimental film Golden Golden, this short scene depicts an encounter between two Asian youth, set to the voice of Nat King Cole. This lush, Edwardian fantasia celebrates nature, poetry and queer-transgender desire. From Afro-Asian Visions Exploding Lineage II - curated by KB Boyce & Celeste Chan - queerrebels.com

Incrongruities between body and gender become and obstacle for lovers as they navigate the painfully awkward rift between dysphoria and desire.

Resisterectomy is a 4-part multi-media moving image, picture and text installation that challenges the boundaries of a gendered body through the examination and infiltration of, in and on various medical procedures and spaces.

Bob and Candace live a normal life peacefully in the heart of America in the 50s. Yet they hide a terrible secret ...Beware is a film that parodies the codes of American propaganda films of 1950-60 to divert and promote a message of prevention against transphobia.

Hell hath no fury like a gender identity scorned in this lo-fi voyage across a college campus. Ze triumphs with a brave, earnest sing-a-long of self-love, served with a tangy dose of shade.

Holy Trannity, a video in the form of triptych, explores the beauty and pain of a world that takes issue with every facet of the femme and gender non-conforming identities – and calls us to action. Holy Trannity seeks to save our lives, because if we do not demand the respect and recognition we seek, it will surely never be afforded to us. With the creation of Holy Trannity, J'VLYN opens themself to the world; there are no costumes, only outfits, there are no characters, only her. She's not pulling punches, she's not afraid; she's only telling her truth.

Two Spirits features Trudie Jackson, a trans Navajo woman, as the protagonist. Here the work investigates the mythology of the American west by seamless entering and exiting a surreal and representational world. Ritual, noir, beauty, and invented folklore are played out by the simple gestures of panning the horizon, brushing hair, and other symbols of the western scenery.

The 10th annual trans*march took place on June 28th 2013 in San Francisco, CA. As the most politicized of the three marches during pride week in San Francisco, it has a tradition of raising visibility of trans*-people and their issues. This short documentary is a collection of queer voices during the trans*march 2013 and reflects parts of the recent discussions concerning the trans*- and LGBT - movement.

The vernacular of gender is ever growing and changing, yet many continue to live beyond these definitions. Defying language and category, we are unknown: akin to mystical creatures. Multiple exposures of a single roll of Super 8 film allow a brief glimpse into the heart of this chimera: to be unidentified; unexplained.

Passing was made in reaction to the sudden passing of a close friend and also to the absurdity of the looking end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar. Passing consists of three monologues, with original designed images edited to the rhythms of these three texts.

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.

A man returns, after fifty years, to New York City's Chinatown to care for his dying mother. He is a librarian, a cataloguer and recorder, a gay man, a watcher, an impersonator. He passes his time collecting images - his witnesses and collaborators. Sitting in the dark, we look at them and share his cloak of invisibility, both a benefit and a curse. This award-winning film is an essay narrated from one man's point of view. But it is also fiction, for this man is a made-up person, an amalgam of research, interviews, off-the-record comments, secrets, improbabilities, and free-floating desires. This man, who never tells us his name, returns as both insider and outsider to a neighbourhood from which he escaped, as a teenager, as fast as he could.

Masha Nehls does unspeakably delicious things to a giant wedding cake while the New York City Drag March chants in the background. This film celebrates the lack of desire to marry as well as the continuation of living queer lives full of many forms of enticing platonic and sexual kinship that have never needed any government approval.

Invited to speak at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, the narrator describes an intimate encounter with an Evil Colonizing Queen which leads to Turtle Island's contraction of an invasive European flora.

A stop-motion film constructed out of over 10,000 high-resolution images taken over the course of a year, Shift follows a character who is born from a tree and stitches a female skin out of leaves. Then one day a fierce dog steals her face. Shift is a visual conversation between filmmaker Juan Carlos Zaldivar (Cuba) and sculptor Anja Marais (South Africa), both of whom emigrated to the U.S. and whose creative thrust is fueled by internal journeys, transformation and our relationships to our bodies as well as to our environments.

Life's all about two things: firstly, being loved, and secondly not being alone. But what happens when people aren't enough, or when they're too much? Geliebt is not a film about the pros and cons of emotional and sexual relationships with animals but a film about the relationship between humans and animals, poised somewhere between love and dependence.

Big Mysterious Monster // issei anarchists // queer mega shadows in violent acts of failure. From Afro-Asian Visions Exploding Lineage II - curated by KB Boyce & Celeste Chan - queerrebels.com

A portrayal of the damaging effects that incarceration has on the psyche. The narrative is based on the inner-monologue of a recently-released prisoner whose vision of the outside world has been warped through years of confinement. The visuals of the film are as appetizing as they are disorienting. Blick toys with shadows and light, presenting a distorted outside world that refuses to let viewers find their bearings. We are left with the sentiment that the experience of imprisonment does not leave the prisoner—but rather haunts daily life as an imprint of trauma.

Made with pixel-art rotoscoped animation, this powerful and moving short re-enacts Chelsea Manning's online conversations from the eve of her arrest. Pixelated humanoid outlines against a black background allows us to focus on her words, as both sound and as text. The result is a moving evocation of Manning's bravery and purpose, despite the bleakness and isolation of her situation.

An autobiographical doc from Singapore-born male mezzo Stephen Chen. Gifted with a voice with a very high range, Chen relates the discovery, silencing, and survival of his voice in Singapore and North America. The doc's fascinating opening minutes tell his story of queer resilience within conservative boarding school and military cultures, accompanied by B-roll of Singaporean propaganda. Chen also shows off his musical chops, singing Julie Andrews and several arias.

Her face is a map of the world. Korean-born, US-raised, London-based neo-burlesquer Fancy Chance takes the western beauty myth walkabout in a collaboration with Mat Snead (who has also directed videos starring Taylor Mac and Wilfredo).

Created as part of the live show I Love You But We Only Have 14 Minutes to Save the Earth. There's nothing like the end of the world to sharpen the mind. Bette Bourne, veteran of seminal queer performance troupe Bloolips, was one of several people Nathan Evans approached to collaborate on a show anticipating the apocalypse. The result was this semi-animated reminiscence of love and rockets in October 1962.

Now here's a rare sight: two naked elderly men in elegant surroundings talk about their relationship and the good old days, and chat in a refreshingly candid manner about their fetishes, sadomasochistic predilections and bondage.

18-year-old Lake has a sweet activist girlfriend, but one day discovers he has an unusual attraction for the elderly. Fate conspires to land him a summer job at a nursing home where he develops a tender relationship with Mr. Peabody. Discovering that the patients are being over-medicated to make them easier to manage, Lake decides to wean him off his 
medication and help him escape, resulting in a humorous and heartfelt road trip that strengthens their bond. The always provocative Bruce LaBruce is back with a new romantic comedy (of sorts).

Mystery viewed through the keyhole in this super-Scandanavian claymation. Confined to drab interiors, Tord, a fox-man, and Tord, a rabbit-man, develop a hieroglyphic language and become friends, maybe. Clever and endearing and eerie and off-putting, Tord & Tord presents a psychoanalytic riddle worth multiple viewings.

Welcome to Café Hit, just another hipster café, and the death knell of any neighborhood attempting to elude gentrification. Jonas, an anti-gentrification activist, works tirelessly for the cause…but it's hard to stay politically focused when your mind is on sexual fantasies. This story is brought to you in fantastic stop-motion animation of anthropomorphized hardware.

A frumpy middle-aged man sits down at a table to listen to an old-timey radio. Everything changes the moment he turns the dial. No less than George Bizet's Habanera from Carmen has been reinterpreted for MeTube and enhanced with electronic sounds. Beyond the wow-factor, it's included here because of the relationship between voice and costume (and cyborg?).

Alp Haydar draws on his often traumatic experiences of growing up queer in an immigrant Muslim family to single-handedly create (and populate) funny, fantastical cinematic worlds with which he interacts live on stage. This prologue to one of his shows is sung by Alp's on-screen mother, Sharia Law.

Four rolls of super8 film and four pig hearts from the friendly female butcher congeal into this orgy of lesbian cannibalism. Not quite vampires, and not quite zombies, the undead are spread sans fear. These not-so-little deaths are just the beginning.

In Kreuzberg, Berlin, the gays treat themselves and cherish the little things. While one person enjoys a nice mug of beer, another goes to the bathroom stall to masturbate.

I sat on my Tomagotchi and it broke/hatched and now we have The Gem Sisters. Stephanie + Stephanie 2 make my head hurt, but…no big deal. Ouch! is just my brain afraid that what it's watching will kill it. I never forgot my first chili pepper, either. That pepper was a whole new world born in fire. I lived to tell the tale, and so will you. In stunning HD.

This is an excerpt from the full length short LOOM MUSIC by Wednesday Lupypciw. Professors Dickerson and Dickerson interview each other about new advancements in textile art and craft theory, (obviously) circa 1975. Dickerson and Dickerson discuss the dawn of time, but we are impressed instead with the dawn of Herstory in art college academia.

Mangled Barbies galore in this profile of LaVonne Sallee, an altered-Barbie artist from the Bay Area. Sallee tells her story as she drives around town, buys supplies, and works on a couple of Barbie projects for the upcoming 9th Annual Altered Barbie Exhibition. “I don't like her or hate her,” says Sallee, “She's a plethora of ideas. It just goes on forever.” We see Sallee's off-beat and slightly sinister pieces, plus some satisfying footage taken at the expo itself. LaVonne Sallee is an outsider artist we hold dear in our own hearts.

Gorgeous, hysterical, enigmatic, ridiculous, A Man to Pet is one of BURN's favorite performers. Inspired by Catherine Deneuve's vital advocacy work for Chanel, Pet welcomes you into her special place.

Our post-shower protagonist dances and brushes teeth in a bedroom strewn with the artifacts of homo-desire; his inner Jeff Stryker and Judy Garland following their own brick roads of yellows and pinks and fleshtones. Cocks bursting out tongues forking around fingers, cartoon eyes and rosebuds agape. Stroke along as he bathes himself further with a flurry of images from the collective art/porn library of his homo-male head, from Genet to Porky Pig. Porky piggies, indeed.

Fabulous Russella is best known on the London scene for making pancakes on stage while lip-synching to Christina Aguilera. Here, she plays a character with a lower tolerance for mess—or so it seems... (Apologies if the Scottish accent is a bit tricky.)