Film Categories: Identity

  • Reinventing the Unconventional: The Hearn Generating Station

    Nestled next to downtown Toronto looms the abandoned Hearn Generating Station. Thirty years after it was decommissioned, art director Jorn Weisbrodt envisioned an entire arts festival, Luminato, taking place in the Hearn. We hear about the challenges of reinventing such an unconventional space, from politics to the will of the Toronto people.

  • Sira

    ‘Sira’, in Arabic, literally translated, means biography. Arabs are a people known for their oral tradition. Through excavated footage and narration, Sira examines the displacement of a family, beginning with the event that catapulted their exodus from Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion.

  • Presentation

    Holly, an anxiety-ridden high school sophomore, is faced with the challenge of giving a class presentation. As a result, she considers self medicating with Xanax.

  • Reinaldo’s Motifs

    In 1927, Reinaldo Ferreira, a well-known journalist and writer who published under the pen name ‘Repórter X’, founded the cinema production company Repórter X Film, through which he directed four films that same year. Among them we find “O Táxi no. 9297” and “Rita ou Rito?…”, where homosexuality, transvestism and drug use feature explicitly in Portuguese cinema for the first time. “Reinaldo’s Motifs” is an audiovisual essay that focuses on a series of recurrent motifs in Reinaldo Ferreira’s cinematic work. A commissioned work by the Cinemateca Portuguesa, in which I tried to play around with these recurrences, in a manner…

  • Flash Flood

    Deep within a dream, a cataclysmic flood washes over the planet, and reveals three unique perspectives on gender and identity. The film is animated by volunteer transgender artists and animators from across the globe.

  • Bobbi and Sheelagh

    Bobbi meets a mythological creature whose ancient battle for acceptance helps Bobbi overcome her own fears of being herself – a young lesbian. This animated short has been created in a traditional method with thousands of hand painted cells and pencil crayon backgrounds. Featuring Canadian actor Nisha Ahuja and Irish actor Mel Bradley.

  • 3 Siblings

    Three siblings with different gender identities and sexual orientations bring us into their world during São Paulo’s LGBT Pride Month. We learn about their relationships with each other, and how they work to overcome rampant homophobia and transphobia that exists in Brazil. Best Documentary Award, Alucine Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2019

  • Beat

    Caleb is a dancer. He’s also deaf. Caleb experiences music through feeling—and when he meets Thaddeus, a local musician, he begins to feel a lot. A mutual interest in music (and one another) brings the two young men together. Sometimes, love doesn’t have to be complicated.

  • View

    Nameer must take action, as he is being watched as a ‘thief’ by numerous viewers.

  • HOME MADE

    Home Made is an intimate, contemplative portrait of two queer tattoo artists navigating an industry traditionally dominated by white, straight, cisgender males. The film weaves together the parallel narratives of Jasmine, a shop owner in Philadelphia, and sally, a stick-and-poke artist in Brooklyn, through their trials and triumphs.