Film Categories: Youth

  • Transforming FAMILY

    “Transforming FAMILY” jumps directly into an ongoing conversation among trans people about parenting. It’s a beautiful snapshot of current issues, struggles and strengths of transexual, transgender and gender fluid parents (and parents-to-be) in North American society today.

  • Teens Like Phil

    Inspired by the alarming increase in real-life tragedies involving high school bullying and suicide, “Teens Like Phil” tells the story of a gay teen, Phil, and one of his classmates, Adam, who brutally bullies him. The film explores the complicated and painful circumstances surrounding this relationship in an effort to better understand the roots of this epidemic. Phil’s story is ultimately a tale of survival and transcendence from this cycle of abuse.

  • My Best Dress

    The title “My Best Dress” is interpreted in two divergent yet related directions: the attire one would wear out to a club, or alternatively, to a funeral. In this context, the music video represents both a celebration of youth culture, particularly with finding acceptance, expression and love within queer youth ball culture, and conversely, the inherent dangers associated with the reckless, uninformed and unprepared dark-side of underground culture. Music by MURR, featuring Rosina.

  • My clothes were dragging me back

    In “My clothes were dragging me back”, I have continued to work with Delia Derbyshire’s radio show for the BBC: ”Inventions for Radio: Dreams” (1964). The stories, which are about being chased and awkward situations, are combined with found footage from a 1968 educational film about a school in Toronto that embraced various types of pedagogical practice. Short edits of children in different states of mind are repeated, like a pickup on a turntable stuck on a track. A superimposed image, a kaleidoscope moves quickly and serves as a white noise on these portraits.

  • Angels

    This film shows the entertaining and joyful experiences of children in a series of creative workshops. With the help of artists, children make kites, poetry, music, movement, dance and film in Toronto schools – both normal and special education classrooms – as well as Scadding House, headquarters for the Inner City Angels in Toronto. The film provides a useful reference guide for alternative teaching methods and techniques for interaction between teachers and students.

  • The Prince’s Sword

    “The Prince’s Sword” is based on the true story of the conflict that arose in the director’s pacifist home when her 5-year old son wanted a toy sword. Reflecting the changing face of family, this film explores how two mothers struggle to guide their son’s masculinity in a peaceful, feminist fashion, while still honouring his boyhood. It puts a contemporary twist on the universal challenge of parenting as a complex process of letting go of what you love the most. When our children challenge our values, when it is right to hold on and when is it right to reconsider?

  • Gay Goth Scene

    For a young boy school is a living hell. He decided to put an end to it. “Gay Goth Scene“ is a mixture of short film & music video, that deals with a worldwide social disease: bullying.

  • Hoshi Neko (Little Star)

    This 16mm B&W cut-out animation borrows narrative tropes from early Atari video games, silent films, and anime cartoons, offering a weird story and hybrid aesthetic. The narrative is based on the imagined adventures of the singer’s lost cat, Hoshi. Hoshi eats a koi fish, who emerges angry from his digestive system. The koi enlists the help of a pug to exact revenge, and the three characters embark on an epic chase through the cosmos. Their journey brings them through wormholes and across poisonous planets where their skin is melted off by acid rain.

  • 100 Butches #9: Ruby

    A catholic convent schoolgirl remembers her first gay crush.

  • Severed

    Unable to cope with the murder of his identical twin, a young man resorts to disturbing measures to restore their severed bond.