Film Categories: body

  • Trans Cabaret

    “Trans Cabaret” is half hour long “edutainment” cabaret of sketches about “all things trans”, performed by members of the trans community for the purposes of bringing “translightenment to the masses”. The video also goes behind the scenes to show the performers coping with being homeless, dealing with transphobia in the shelter system, telling parents about being trans and dealing with abusive partners. During the cabaret the performers rehearse tongue-in-cheek sketches by “characters” in the cabaret. The video demonstrates through the cabaret an open attitude about the basics of gender reassignment surgery, gender identities and orientations, the myths and realities of…

  • Audrey’s Beard

    “Audrey’s Beard” was shot on my beloved Bolex camera. The film was conceived as a time-lapse documentary film experiment with shots of this once butch dyke filmmaker’s beard growing in over a 21-day period in the early 1990’s. At the time it felt like it was a very transgressive act as an artist, transitioning gender, to grow the beard I had felt ashamed of for so many years, using my body to tell a story, coming to terms with the shame of being born Intersex in a creative and empowering way. Ten years later, in 2001, a potent voice over…

  • Things That Happen in The Bathroom

    In the intimate sanctuary of the bathroom, a lonely young queer yearns for love, and learns how to survive heartbreak. For Jak (John Calvin Pierce), the bathroom is a refuge, a place where they can exist without wearing the mask they present to the world. But when their feelings of loneliness threaten to overwhelm them, Jak invites a new hookup into the bathroom – opening up to all the pleasure, embarrassment and self-discovery that comes with queer intimacy.

  • Ambient Walk #3

    In his series of site-specific installation works, Janzen navigates the back alleys of the city on foot with a video camera focused down on the walking surface. As surfaces rapidly pass by the lens, an unusual perspective of the city is captured. The visual result is highly animated with an endless variety of pattern, line, and colour. The rhythm of the artist’s footsteps and surrounding human and machine activity adds an ambient sound mix. Back alleys present an alternative for travel through the city, outside the traditional grid of streets and sidewalks. They offer a more private view of the…

  • The Astronauts’ Bodies

    When his two mature children Anton and Linda start leaving the house, after graduating from school, father Michael stops taking care of his body as a protest. His son Anton takes part in a bed-rest-study to contribute to space-traveling, while his sister Linda is in search of her first sexual experience and is drawn to a suspicious young man. The film is a poetic story about the progression of dreams to go to space and about the organic beauty of the human body, its desires and longings.

  • ABYSS

    Four ancient Gods, half human, half animal, are trapped in an Abyss for their human sins. One of them removes her mask and starts a dislocated dance. She tries to escape the room, hopeless. None of the other Gods, still obsessed with their inner demons, seem interested in her performance. As the dancer tries a desperate last move, she is drowned in a thick white mist, defeated.

  • Le Dormeur Du Val

    Art essay video, free interpretation of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Le Dormeur Du Val”, aimed at pointing the absurdity of war: through history and continents, no matter their race or religion, soldiers, instruments of the authorities, represent one and only person: another victim.

  • Topology of a String

    Topology of A String is a video installation of seven looping videos that investigate permutations and possibilities of a single continuous line in space. Without ever breaking the line, hundreds of variant forms can be created by weaving the string over and under fingers, across the palms or backs of the hands. This project links string games, an ancient form of entertainment shared by cultures the world over, to the branch of mathematics called topology. Each sequence starts at the same opening position yet a single change in the over-under pattern results in a completely different form. The near infinite…

  • Rettet das Feuer (Rescue The Fire)

    Berlin, 1993. Photographer and artist, Jürgen Baldiga, battles HIV. In the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic reached its climax, to which no one was prepared. Infected bodies and their stories diminish, erasing their existence. Through the death of his friends and subsequently his own, Baldiga becomes the chronicler of his time: “I am taking a picture. I photograph the world. I exist.” Identity and history disappear without the persistence of memory. Until the final days of his life, Jürgen documents the exodus that seizes him. Rettet das Feuer (Rescue the Fire) directs the gaze to a piece of West Berlin history…

  • Doing and undoing: poems from within #1 radiotherapy

    It deals with interventions that I had made with my mother during her cancer treatment. The film is part of large project dealing with my mother’s cancer healing process. Hacer y Deshacer: Poems from Within (2019) is an interactive video installation. Most of the video sequences show Gelis’s mother undressing, one strand of yarn at a time, sometimes in Panama’s Casco Viejo (historic district), sometimes in the turbulent waters of the Pacific. Using her mother’s body, she tells the story of a cancer survivor, the story of countless others. Gelis invites us into the healing process: the viewer can change…