Film Categories: Gender

  • sway / pull

    Created during the COVID-19 pandemic when queer spaces were disappearing across Toronto, sway / pull is a meditation on the erosion of Hanlan’s point beach in both literal and figurative senses. Hanlan’s Point Beach, located on the Toronto Islands, was the site of Toronto first gay pride celebrations in 1970s and remains a queer haven today. Additionally, the Toronto Islands have faced poor city planning that has led to a significant amount of erosion on the beach. This film plays with the concept of erosion by the physical pushing of sand to speak back to the literal erosion of the…

  • HK Uprising

    A tribute to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong that are taking place three decades after the Tiananmen Square uprising. Note: This film can be displayed as a multi-channel installation with May 35.

  • Sab Shimono: Acting “As If”

    On the eve of his eightieth birthday, acclaimed Japanese American actor Sab Shimono reflects on his lifelong commitment to the craft of acting, his struggles against racism and homophobia, and how his life was transformed by gay bars and marriage equality.

  • Another Europe

    An essay film rooted in experimental cinema and queer storytelling. A female narrator (fellow artist Kathi Hofer) provides the voice over for this film, making it a reflection on my life and my journey through Europe from 2019-2020. Associative spaces unfold. A train of thoughts. The boundaries between factual and memories become a blur. How much of my personal story can be read more globally? Visual portraits of Europe’s faraway places away from typical tourist hot spots provide the mise en scène for this film. Landscapes in transition, pictures of movement, visually resembling the long journeys I have undertaken using…

  • Marble presents “IT’S MY HOUSE”

    Made in the style of a karaoke music video, this is part homage to Diana Ross’s 1979 single “It’s My House,” and part exploration of the messes and pleasures of having and sharing a “space” to call our own. Intertwined with the characteristic lyric titles of karaoke videos is a collection of scenes filmed on Super 8 where two people and a puppet move in and out of the frame, caught in the act of something… Part consciousness-raising, part illicit concoction, part inventory of liquids, text fragments and scattered objects, these scenes accompany such lyrics as “there’s my chair /…

  • Little Sky

    Little Sky follows the journey of Sky, a Chinese American pop star who returns to the city they were raised in to find their estranged immigrant father. Haunted by their childhood memories, Sky risks their non-binary identity to end the cycle of violence in their family. In the confrontation, Sky discovers something that changes how they feel about the people they love. Packed with original songs, Little Sky is a film about finding the chosen family who sees us when our blood family cannot.

  • Lavender: A Lesbian Love Story

    By accepting a lavender marriage proposal, Joy risks her secret relationship, forcing her to choose between appeasing her family and true love.

  • sous-ex

    The silence of the dark rooms is followed by the screaming of the scanner that resurrects our sweaty embraces on the film. Of this caress, there remains only the violence of an image; of your sex a shadow; of our fluids, an emulsion; of our loves, solitudes.

  • 13 Eggs

    Over four years I collected footage to talk about my experience trying to make a baby. I managed to freeze 13 eggs. I stopped halfway through making this work because I failed and had to figure out how to make a film about failing in this commonly shared life goal. Grieving people who never were is harder than it seems.

  • Skin Deep

    Skin Deep leads us into worlds where people are never what they appear to be. It is a riveting psychological drama about obsession, relationship and sexuality. As Alex Koyama prepares to shoot an exploitation film about tattooing and the culture of pleasure and pain, the world around her exists only to serve her film. She initiates a dangerous and threatening game when Chris Black responds to her ad in a tattoo magazine. For Alex, this is living research, and she ignores the fact that Chris is deeply disturbed and gender-disoriented. This denial escalates into a psychological battle between Alex and…