Past EventFilm

Intergalactic Cabaret

Thursday, March 31, 2022
7:00–8:13pm EST
In Person
Tranzac Club
Online
TQFF.ca
Available Now
73 min.

If humanity perished and another species found a record of this film program, they would discover an archive of childhood dreams, resistance inscribed on skin, relics of technology in flux. Collectively, they lend the impression of humanity’s talent for resistance and variation.

The films in this programme call attention to the beauty and new traditions we can create, simply by virtue of existing in space. Each autonomous gesture and breath allows us to wander away from established paths, toward the rhythms and sounds of liberation.

Our Partners:

Films

Jan Julius - MANOR HOLES HIGH RISE

Nick McKernan • 3 min • USA • 2021

Set against the backdrop of an insidious rent crisis, Jan Julius – MANOR HOLES HIGH RISE is a lively and rambunctious plunge into a vivid queer dystopia, one where rent will consume you, uniforms manifest into tyranny, and four residents fight for their right to live and love. As collective care and erotic companionship blossoms on the 15th floor, tenancy laws threaten this queer oasis. In this catchy animated ode to rent-free nudity and what really makes a good neighbour, the filmmaker examines the housing crisis through a futuristic (yet timely) lens and celebrates the right to chill.

Nick McKernan (he/him) is a 2D animator and multidisciplinary artist with a sensitive, observant approach to narrative. His path into animation has been one long, inevitable surprise. In Oregon and Washington, he performed as a stage actor, musician, live-action filmmaker, and budding comic artist between various hospitality and education jobs. As an animator, Nick’s works have been described as gentle and mature, capturing domestic struggles, atmospheric locales, and gender fluid fantasias. His storytelling often employs visual allegory to externalize the yearnings of characters, leading to striking animations teeming with pathos and a universal grace. He currently resides in Baltimore, MD.

Victor's Body

Victor Di Marco & Márcio Picoli • 15 min • Brazil • 2020

In this multi-sensorial film, Victor, the eponymous filmmaker, recollects memories and encounters that influenced his relationship to his body. These tender contemplations build into a powerful testimony. Through an ethereal blend of refracted light, sound, and texture, he spotlights himself on screen, and imagines a universe in which he can rethink the possibilities, representation, and empowerment of disabled people’s bodies.

 

Victor Di Marco (1996) and Marcio Picoli (1994) are filmmakers from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Their work is characterized by an investigation and interpretation of different types of bodies and expressions. Di Marco’s and Picoli’s films research minimalist narratives and self-fiction. Their last film, Victor’s Body, has been screened at important Brazilian festivals and has won over 20 awards.

Before the Blue

romy pocztaruk • 14 min • Brazil • 2019

A sequence of subtle narratives and radically sensorial scenes, Before the Blue uses stream of consciousness to ruminate on the nature of existence, violence, the passage of time, death technologies, and the power of animal and mineral bodies. We glide from a 21st century nightclub to a nuclear war to the Stone Age. Chronologies collapse between dance movements, static images of power-thirsty science, and a reunion with nature, all offering an escape from the idea of being human.

 

romy pocztaruk (1983, Porto Alegre, BR) uses varied media and materials. Her poetic propositions deal with the encounter between different fields and disciplines as science and history with the visual arts and cinema. In her research, she addresses the importance of the artist as someone who can engage and put in evidence political and historical issues of our world, be that in the past, present or future.

Monologue Harmonic

Bawaadan Collective • 6 min • Canada • 2020

 

Monologue Harmonic is an otherworldly fusion of Mohawk legend, despotic visions, and collective cultural analysis. It is set within two paradoxical worlds, where familiar landscapes and objects take on new significance. These rich tableaux mirror a reality not unlike current Indigenous experiences in resistance to colonialism. Created by the Bawaadan Collective, which self-produces Indigenous content, this film immerses us in an aesthetic of liberation.

Janet Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer, poet, media producer, sound artist and performance artist. She brings her poetic practice to live in all areas off-page as well as in print with 7 published collections to date. Janet is a new publisher with the Ojistoh Publishing label which she operates from her home territory of Six Nations of the Grand River.

Bawaadan Collective

Formalized in the Spring of 2019, we worked cooperatively together to create the short film Midland Motel Room 77′. Utilizing close friend and familial ties, we quickly began to self-produce our own Indigenous content. Modern, contemporary content. As the scale and scope of each project grew, we continued to explore and expand our membership to incorporate new skills and relationships.

This Kind Body

Scottee & Lea Anderson • 20 min • UK • 2021

 

This Kind Body features five fat queer performers and their attempt to carve out a space in which their fatness isn’t the cause of their death but the reason they survive. Made across nine locations and shot entirely on mobile phones during a national lockdown in the UK, This Kind Body is a polyphonic, surreal, and potent dance film from Fat Blokes company, a collective of non-trained queer dancers based in the UK. This is their first film project, a powerful work that invites us to “imagine a world in which your body is your own.”

Scottee is a self taught artist who makes political performance, live art and stuff for walls. He is the co-founder of Scottee & Friends Ltd – a collective of artists, producers and participants working across the UK. Scottee is an associate artist at HOME (Manchester) and is the founder of the Working Class Artist Group. He is one of the token working class people allowed on BBC Radio 4; he has made documentaries, columns and presented some of the biggest arts shows on the network. He is also the host of chart topping podcast After the Tone.

Lea Anderson MBE is a British choreographer and artistic director. She co-founded The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs dance companies with Teresa Barker and Gaynor Coward, at which she has choreographed over 100 works. The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs are two of the foremost contemporary dance companies who have worked in Britain over the past 25 years. Under the artistic direction of choreographer Lea Anderson, they have created a distinctive choreographic language that is as defiantly individual as it is recognisable. The all-female Cholmondeleys were formed in 1984 and the all-male Featherstonehaughs in 1988 and both have toured extensively in Britain and abroad. Lea and her companies have also become recognised for outdoor and site specific works, performances in alternative venues such as Glastonbury Festival, work for TV, film and video and an innovative and responsive programme of work with young people.

CHELSEA WOLFE x DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE - Far From Ideal

Amber Beaton • 2 min • New Zealand • 2021

 

A Māori woman summons Hine Nui Te Po, the goddess of death, in a confrontation with a colonial priest. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), where Māori spirituality and language were criminalized, with colonial religion violently mandated, this film envisions resistance and a decolonial future. Set to the atmospheric sounds of Chelsea Wolfe and Divide and Dissolve, this project is a love letter to Indigenous women still feeling the effects of colonization today and invokes spirituality as resistance.

Amber Beaton is an indigenous (Māori) filmmaker from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Specializing in music videos, her work has been described as “Dreamlike”, “Haunting and Beautiful” and as “Disturbing and surreal imagery crackling with magikal energy”. Charmed by a gloomy aesthetic, Amber’s work has found a home with the rock, metal and alternative music scenes in New Zealand and abroad.

ISN'T IT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Joseph Wilson • 13 min • UK • 2021

A mix of drag, dance, and mise en scène, Isn’t it a Beautiful World takes us on a subliminal journey. Sonya, Harry and Kenya, a trio of queer performers, dramatize and lipsynch their way through visually stunning abandoned locations. With its haunting sound and sumptuous colour palette, this short evokes the dizzying tension between childhood ideals, loneliness, and the feeling of falling in a dream.

Joseph Wilson is a queer artist, activist and drag performer, living amongst the eclectic East London community. His work explores LGBTQ+ narratives, taking inspiration from his own lived experiences as well as documenting the people and places around him, amplifying their voices and celebrating their stories through his art. Joseph has had work premiered at BFI London Film Festival, BFI Flare, Fringe! Queer Arts Festival as well as global video platform NOWNESS. Most recently, he was selected as one of the FLAMIN (Film London Artists Moving Image Network) artists. In September 2021, Joseph was selected as one of the 2021 Dazed X CIRCA artists and had his work screened on Piccadilly Circus, Shinjuku, Tokyo and K-Pop Square, Seoul.

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