Film Categories: LGBTQ

  • BLU In YOU

    Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and…

  • Iridescence

    “Iridescence” is an experimental visual short film, which exposes how society needs to label a person by their sexuality. In this story, dance and interpretive movement replaces the dialogue, allowing us to use the body to communicate the relationship between the characters and they’re true human emotions. Through stylize lighting and abstract visual, Iridescence tells the story of an emotionally repressed abusive father and his son who struggles to accept himself and his sexuality.

  • Maybe Today

    The lines between reality and fantasy become blurred, when a woman who has feelings for her best friend imagines what their relationship could be if she acted on them.

  • Framing Agnes (short)

    In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury. Starring Zackary Drucker (Transparent), Angelica Ross (Pose), Silas Howard (By Hook or By Crook), and Max Wolf Valerio (The Testosterone Files). “An incredible film that transforms the most difficult of archives and shows us critical trans study in action, on screen—I will be…

  • Cold Hands

    In an effort to make friends in high school, Lucas finds himself in a position that compromises his safety. In the aftermath, he realizes that the support he seeks is not guaranteed.

  • Ballet Jazz

    Karine and Karine share one dream: to dance in the musical Cats on Broadway. But on audition day, their road trip from a remote Quebec suburb to New York City goes horribly, hilariously wrong.

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Wayward Emulsions

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from stray reels of 35mm film. Winner, Experimental Short Grand Jury Prize, Slamdance Festival 2019

  • Sworded Love

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of star-crossed swordsmen are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from a stray reel of a 35mm kung fu action film.

  • TSSP

    In T.S.S.P., the 11th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, CHRISTEENE Turns, Stares, Shakes and Poses through Toronto performance collective HOTNUTS’ mega-dosed acid ass cracked world in search of the one thing she really needs. Tha’ Dick.