Film Categories: Performance

  • Revolve

    Revolve reimagines the jazz standard “All of Me” to be an assertion of femme for femme desire rather than the self effacing ballad Billie Holiday popularized. Revolve uses the pole as a conduit through time and space to make a love offering to Holiday asking “why not” love and have our full selves loved.

  • Woven Account

    After the artist’s own gaybashing in the Bay Area, they wondered what it would take for their story to make the news. Allegra went on to research reported instances of hate violence targeting LGBTQIA2s+ individuals in the archives of 16 local print and online newspapers. After going through nearly two years of archives – the artist discovered only 33 articles detailing individual hate crimes or stories concerning hate crimes legislation for the broader LGBTQIA2s+ community in the Bay Area. Where they could get their hands on the physical news articles detailing hate crimes, the artist spun that newsprint by hand…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Arrival 1, Arrival 2

    This experimental essay film springs from the final days of December 2020 when I moved from Chicago to Toronto. The film documents my move and then continues on alternate paths, weaving through the liminal spaces of borders, sickness, interpellation, and dreams. Content Note: This film contains extended discussions about fatphobia and disordered eating. Specifically, this film contains descriptions of food restriction, idealization of thinness, and intense emotional and physical pain after eating. After 11:41 there is no direct discussion of disordered eating. Flashing lights throughout. Loud noises throughout.

  • collapse

    a demonstration of falling techniques on super 8 colour stock

  • séance

    In this piece, I attempted to switch between the persona of a settler woman and myself speaking on postcolonialism. I do this by taking my costume on and off. “Occupying the bodies of notable female figures from Peterborough’s history, Calla Durose Moya stages a conversation with the past in order to come to terms with her identity in the present. With volunteer and employment experience in local heritage institutions, Durose Moya has observed first-hand the limits imposed by the colonial lens with regard to a routinely prejudiced and biased version of history. Appropriating the images of settler women for her…

  • blonde asian

    I found a post online about blonde Asian bimbos, and this video is me reading the post aloud in my bedroom. This is a commentary of me being or not being self-aware of my gendered and sexualized identity in the digital age, and an attempt at the de-sexualization of my body by performing the very performative found script.

  • Don’t Forget The Water

    A phone conversation sets the diasporic table as a disembodied figure prepares Qahwah Arabi / Arabic Coffee. Here, the contradictions inherent in Google Translate’s instant camera feature are made visible through glitched mistranslations. Using these flaws as a prompt, the communication between a mother and a daughter considers ambiguity as a source of embodied knowledge.