Library

Ballroom is an international phenomena of queer grassroot competition, centered around dance, beauty, fashion, commentating, and other creative talents. A “Kiki” denotes its younger, friendlier spinoff. The Toronto Kiki ballroom scene has been an under-recognized part of the queer creative community of Toronto for past 10 years, and artists like Robin Gaudreau hope to change this.

In this screening and discussion of the film, Disruption Embraced, ten first generation disabled and mad artists discuss their personal histories, reflecting on critical experiences that stoked their passion towards their art. Central in their stories is the creative

In this tender, generative and lush conversation, Mimi Zhu and Sania Khan will speak to how their creative practices, including Mimi’s forthcoming book (Be Not Afraid Of Love) and Sania’s forthcoming film (Custard), are currently musing on the themes of queer kinship, platonic intimacy, and collective dreaming. Throughout their conversation, Mimi and Sania hope for audiences to reflect on how queer friendships are integral to queer futurisms, and how the inherently liberatory framework that is consciously practiced within many queer friendships allows for the collective activation of imagined possibilities that centre embodied ease, love and justice.

What will be left for you, me, and everyone else once every last drop of water has been purchased, poisoned, and desiccated? Where will we go when rents have increased, and minimum wage can no longer house us? Who will we call a community as we venture into the unknown? How will we arrive there?

In 2019 Pride Toronto accepted a series of grants totaling $1,850,000 from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Ministry of Public Safety. These grants promised a series of projects to celebrate police services,

In 1991, local artists and grassroots activists collaborated on an innovative public access cable series entitled Toronto Living with AIDS (and were eventually shut down because of "too much thigh stroking"). These half-hour,

‘Queer’ is an amorphous goo that you cannot hold or control, that seeps into everything—it is both a deeply bad and good word. I love “goo” because it is profoundly playful, and profoundly gross. Goo sums up the stickiness, the

Mainstream South Asian media uncritically features upper-caste/class, Eurocentric coded bodies and embraces models of development that recreate systemic and global inequities. Creating alternative images, worldbuilding, and stories of South Asian futurisms can help us interrogate these assumptions.

The work of groundbreaking author Jewelle Gomez exemplifies how the genres of horror, science fiction, and speculative fiction can offer world-building opportunities for Queer, 2Spirit, and Trans people to dream up futures that include their lives and community.

This panel centers the hybrid narratives of queer and transgender of scholar-activists of color. Weaving together personal narrative and the, at times, resilient destinations that theory and activism can lead us to, these readings explore the mental health practices of three QTPOC scholar-activists during the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers, moderated by Max Ferguson.

Join filmmaker, writer, and educator Chanda Chevannes for an interactive session around best practices for documentary producers, directors, and crews during the COVID-19 pandemic. The session will begin with a deep dive into Documentary Production in the Era of COVID-19, a new online guide researched and written by Chanda for the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), in response to calls from documentary filmmakers for more genre-specific pandemic guidance.

Although we have long been seduced by the reveries of the Internet, virtual space has acquired a whole new meaning amidst the pandemic. At the time of crisis, digital spaces have become havens for community organizing, mutual care, and pleasure seeking. While the Internet has affected each one of us differently during the past year, the queer community has been able to collectively adapt and then prolifically maneuver the capitalist mechanisms behind the pandemic era cyberspace. By taking a close look at a live-streaming platform and an online party phenomenon, this program will decipher the way that queer, trans and Two-Spirit people have been employing the commercialized web technologies to care for each other and ourselves. The program will be followed by a Q&A with the presenters moderated by Dr. Jonathan Petrychyn.

When Dionne Brand’s Long Time Comin’ premiered in 1993, it was a fresh, compellingly lyrical portrait of two Black lesbian artists, posed on the crest of a wave of a cultural revolution. It was – and still is – a very singular film. Almost 30 years later, Black queer artist, writer and programmer, Valérie Bah explores the film and its lasting legacy in conversation with Nya Lewis, Johanna Mabaki and Malique Lee Moore. Like the film itself, this panel is an event not to miss.

Following the screening of STILL (,) HERE – a film programme curated by B.G-Osborne to highlight rural trans and/or Two-Spirit experiences – join B.G-Osborne along with filmmaker Kennlin Barlow (Above a Grey/Green Sea, 2020) and multidisciplinary artist Gil Goletski (HOLE, 2018) for a zoom discussion. The participants will be discussing experiences creating moving-image work in more rural settings, working alone versus collaboratively, and how their environments continue to shape their identities and practices.