Guest curated by Elian Mikkola
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Rinse can be a ritual, act of cleansing or a new beginning. The works in this program each represent a solitary perspective and participate in the communal narrative of queer belonging.
TRT- 68 min
Content Warnings: sexual content, nudity
Keywords: experimental, super8, video art, video poem, non-binary, trans, two-spirit
Q&A with curator to follow screening
Two Sons and a River of Blood
Madsen Minax & Amber Bemak, USA, 2021, 10:30 min
A queer woman is pregnant. The self-made family unit of two dykes and a trans man imagine a kind of erotic magic that will allow for procreation based solely on desire. Together they enact a public sex ritual to symbolize their hopefulness for multiplicity, acknowledging their cyborg bodies as technological interventions. When the queer woman miscarries her child, the three begin to build their own mythic understanding of where bodies live when they are not inside us. They create a story to trace movement of the non-body – from a hole, to a river, to a room. Images of an imaginary white room – an Ikea-esque torture chamber of stillness – haunt them. As a parallel emerges between the pregnant body and the trans body, their techno sex act becomes the key, and a pyramid becomes the portal, to access this other world of non-bodied existence.
Wash Day
Kourtney Jackson, Canada, 9:52 min
As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one's outwardly appearance.
Fluid Bound
Rob Fatal, USA, 2021, 7:39 min
An experimental gender fluid, mestize-Indigenous film that uses text, sound design, crude animation, and bondage rope to meditate on the complex, generations-old relationships and battles between our skin and our souls.
Exalted
Shia Conlon, Finland/Ireland, 2019, 10:49 min
Exalted is a tale of working class childhood in Catholic Ireland. Here the camera roams the landscape in search of portals connected to lost time; a whistle in the dark recalls a former body; a witness shows up and attempts to disrupt narratives they have once lived through.
Skin || diary
Marco Chiong, USA, 2018, 1:00 min
In Skin, found objects are torn and crushed as a representation of Marco’s feelings of gender dysphoria. It features "Finderwimens" by Matt Finders.
Woman Dress
Thirza Cuthand, Canada, 2019, 6:26 min
Pre-contact, a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.
Compliance
Iona Roisin, Finland/UK, 2020, 14:40 min
Compliance is a poetic examination of how trauma reverberates through the years.