Ali must lie and say she is her wife Sam’s sister so that she can be with Sam in the hospital because gay marriage is not legally recognized in the small Texas town where they live. Reluctant to listen to the doctor’s opinions about Sam’s condition, Ali loses herself in the couple’s memories: their first meeting, their first date and the day before Sam’s accident. Simultaneously, the hospital situation comes to a head when Nurse Lucy realizes their true relationship. Ali must confront those who would keep her from Sam as well her own fears of letting go. Selected screenings: USA Film Festival (Finalist, 2012); California International Shorts Film Festival (Honorable Mention, 2012); Palm Springs International ShortFest (Official Selection, 2012); Provincetown International Film Festival (Official Selection, 2012); Newport Beach Film Festival (Official Selection, 2012); Inside Out Toronto LGBT FIlm Festival (Official Selection, 2012); London Lesbian Film Festival (Official Selection, 2012).
Filter Films
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When 13-year-old Dane’s older brother comes out as gay, he spends the day at the community pool trying to figure out what it means for both of them. As he witnesses the actions of his homophobic peers he must come to a decision–stand up for his brother and become a social outcast, or side with his peers and lose his brother forever.
Deep End
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An experimental reinterpretation of Andy Warhol’s 1963 silent short film of the same name, “Kiss” recontextualizes his protest against the Hays Code’s time restriction of onscreen kissing as an impassioned indictment of laws that prohibit and punish homosexuality in certain countries. Featuring a cast of performers hailing from countries where these laws exist transforming an expression of love and desire into a political protest, “Kiss” artfully challenges and resists the sanctioned condemnation and persecution LGBTQ persons confront. Selected screenings: Sicilia Queer Film Festival (2012); Schwule Filmwoche Freiburg – Freiburg International Gay Film Festival (2012); Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival (Official Selection, 2012).
Kiss
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A series of meditations of Egyptian hieroglyphs – designations (as I finally saw them) of nurturing godheads. (SB)
Egyptian Series
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“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.
Transforming FAMILY
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“Akin” marks the first creative collaboration between Toronto-based artist Chase Joynt (Everyday to Stay) and NYC-based filmmaker Brooke Sebold (Red Without Blue). With haunting suburban visuals backed by the rich sounds of Toronto based-band Ohbijou, “Akin” powerfully engages in a relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and her transgender son as they navigate silent secrets of a shared past. Hauntingly beautiful. Rarely have I watched a film that is such a perfect union of parsimony and punch. It left me breathless. – Michelle Stone Perfectly timed and sequenced, “Akin” is so resolutely personal in it’s detailing. Joynt points to a place, draws a circle around it, and then refuses to fill it in, restraint that leaves a powerful silence in which the viewer can inhabit. – Mike Hoolboom Winner of the EP Canada/Canada Film Capital Award for Emerging Canadian Artist, Inside Out LGBT Film & Video Festival (2012)
Akin
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“Beauty Must Suffer” is an homage both to J.K. Huysmans’ novel, “Against The Grain,” and to the personal experience of a weekend spent with Andy Mantegna, a porn star whose rise was just as quick as his descent and subsequent death. The film attempts to approximate the hazy memory of that debaucherous weekend in 1994 among the garish grandeur of an old Victorian flat saturated in baroque décor. The setting’s opulence could not have contrasted more with my larger life context at the time, I was living in a van, with just a backpack full of belongings, including Huysmans’ novel. “Beauty Must Suffer” presents a kaleidoscopic depiction of this convoluted dreamscape, combining the worlds of Huysmans’ novel and the weekend with Andy. Andy’s image is used -multiplied, extended, and distorted- to portray his, Huysman’s, and my own struggle with the pleasures and pitfalls of aesthetic immersion.
Beauty Must Suffer
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In “African Mayonnaise,” the 6th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, Celebrity gets Fucked.
CHRISTEENE “African Mayonnaise”
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In “Bustin’ Brown,” the fourth installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, CHRISTEENE confronts the ever-present bastardization of anal sex from mainstream bourgeois heterosexuals by returning “da buh-hole” to its rightful owners.
CHRISTEENE “Bustin’ Brown”
