WPIRG

WPIRG’s 3rd Annual

POETS, The Atrium, Carl Pollock Hall, University of Waterloo
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On May 1, 2002, transsexual sex worker & performance artist Mirha-Soleil Ross delivered a series of blows in monologue form at anti-prostitution discourses and campaigns, detailing the way they impact, often tragically, on prostitutes’ working conditions and lives. This is a video documentation of the event which took place at the 519 Church Street Community Centre in Toronto. Yapping Out Loud completes a cycle that began in 1990. It synthesizes a decade of transsexual and sex worker political and aesthetic development, reflection, and knowledge in a form that is simultaneously both performance art and activist pedagogy.

POETS, The Atrium, Carl Pollock Hall,
UW
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Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transsexual performer, Videomaker, sex worker, and activist originally from Francophone Québec but living and working in Toronto since 1993. Her videos have been screened at festivals in Canada, Europe, and America. Upcoming screenings include: Signal & Noise (Vancouver), Inside Out (Toronto), and The Melbourne Quer Film Festival (Australia). She is interviewed under the name of Jeanne B. in Shannon Bell‚s book Whore Carnival (Autonomedia, 1995) and appears in Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales (Women‚s Press) and in the upcoming My Breasts, My Choice: Exploring People‚s Experiences of Breast and Chest Surgery through Photography and Storytelling (Sumach Press, 2003). She is editing an anthology of work by transsexual and transgender artists to be published by Women’s Press in Spring 2004.

POETS, The Atrium, Carl Pollock Hall,
UW
(map)

Divas: Love Me Forever is an 81-minute documentary about desire, fantasy, self-acceptance and the search for love. Edimburgo Cabrera, the Cuban-Canadian director and videographer (Latin Queens), follows six black female impersonators through Toronto’s vibrant gay club scene as they search for home, love and family. The life stories of these six divas become a prism illuminating gay life in the Caribbean and North America from the 1970s to the present. A diva is a female impersonator who stands out amongst her peers because of her superior performance talents, devoted public following, and public advocacy on behalf of her gay community. The divas in the documentary are Michelle Ross, Chris Edwards, Jackae Baker, Stephanie Stevens, Matti Dinah and Duchess (deceased).

POETS, The Atrium, Carl Pollock Hall,
UW
(map)

Being fifteen isn’t always the easiest thing in the world, and for Leigh, life as a suburban lesbian just isn’t cutting it. She’s got a wrestling-obsessed jock brother, a wandering father she barely knows who has recently made an appearance back in her life, and an overwhelmed mother who can’t seem to either hold down a job or run the household. There are moments though, when she’s not hiding her diary from her brother or rolling her eyes at her father’s gaffes, that make it all worthwhile. This would be at band practice, where Leigh’s chair in the trumpet section happens to be next to Jen, her best friend and the girl who increasingly occupies her daydreams. In love as only fifteen year olds can be, Leigh’s reveries are disrupted by reality. Her father’s leaving again and her brother John has found her diary. What happens next is as surprising to Leigh as it is to the rest of the family. “21″ is beautifully reminiscent of Todd Solondz’ paean to teenage angst Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Erin Greenwell brings a much needed dose of reality to the current spate of teen lesbian films.

Rewriting the Script: A Love Letter to Our Families is a video produced by Friday Nite Productions, a Toronto based collective of South Asians.

In the words of the collective, “This video is a gesture of love and appreciation for our families of origin. A gesture that attempts to create an opening within our communities in which our families may continue, the often silent, struggle against homophobia. This video is dedicated to shattering those silences that keep us apart and to inspiring strength and courage that bring us together.”

This stunning new documentary explores the loves, lives and sexualities of Queer South Asians and their families of origin. Parents, siblings and family members talk about the struggle to re-write and re-define their relationships.

The screening will be followed by a little reception thing.

Danny is a young man looking for love, the son of a gay dad and a top model mom who died of an overdose when he was still young. He wants to become part of a society that values luxury, glamour and appearances above all, by becoming a model, despite his dad who’s dead set against it. His first forays in the world of fashion dramatically change his vision of things and he abandons everything. He embarks on a quest to find his real identity, taking modeling to its extreme by becoming a stripper. He finds the love he was looking for on the set of a porno shoot, with Karine, a photographer who’s as voyeuristic as he is exhibitionist. But destiny soon catches up with him…

“They don‘t think about what we have together as love. How can you hate someone for loving someone else? It‘s ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what sense it’s in, it’s still love. And that’s all I have to say to everyone. What we have is love and we are sharing it.” So declares Denise, a young Jamaican lesbian who remains defiant in the face of a notoriously violent, homophobic society that threatens her safety and condemns the way she chooses to love.

Songs of Freedom takes us inside Denise‘s world and that of other Jamaican gays and lesbians. It tells compelling stories of individuals courageously carving out meaningful lives, despite the taboo against their sexual identity. Instilled with an often contradictory sense of humour and anguish, these stories are about growing up, going to school, dating, and “coming out” in a country where one‘s individuality often collides with the dictates of family, community and religion.

Still, Songs of Freedom does more than capture the conflict inherent in the lives of Jamaican lesbians and gays. Evoking the emancipative philosophy of the late Bob Marley, the documentary also conveys the unflinching sense of hope, love and camaraderie used by the people in front of the camera to compose their personal songs of freedom and redemption. We see them as whole persons, full of beauty, complexity and contradictions, always deserving of love and respect.

In this sense, Songs of Freedom breaks new ground as the first documentary about gay life in Jamaica, even as it reflects the universal quest for human dignity in the face of oppression.

Songs of Freedom features exclusive footage of a drag queen beauty contest. It also features a kick-ass soundtrack with original music composed by Toronto musician Quammie.

Screening followed by discussion with the film’s director, Phillip Pike.

Ohm-ma
Ruthann Lee, 2002, 5 minutes

Using older photographs of her mother’s youth, super-8 footage of Toronto’s Korea town, along with images of her own present-day life, this intimate narrative video-letter critically explores connections between love, gender, race, sexuality and national identity by a young queer-identified Korean-Canadian woman.

Ruthann is a M. A. candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and she is active in the pursuit of social justice. OHM-MA is her first video production.
OHM-MA premiered at the Inside Out Film Festival and Screened at The Reel Asian Film Festival.

Canada: Sperm Bank of Satan
Graham Hollings, 12 minutes
The filmmaker, Graham Hollings, will be in attendance at this screening.

In 1999 a U.S. preacher called Canada ˜the sperm bank of Satan“ after the Supreme Court extended the definition of spouse to include same sex couples. This film is an oblique response. Canada: Sperm Bank of Satan comments on Canada-U.S. relations: if Canada is a “sperm bank”, who is on top? This queer road movie has fun exploring Canadian identity and the way it is shaped by Canada’s relationship with the United States.

The screening will be followed by discussion with the filmmaker as well as some cast members.

THE IRON LADIES tells the true story of a Thai male volleyball team who won the national championships in 1996 with a team consisting mostly of gay men, drag queens, transsexuals and one straight guy. The film was a surprising success in Thailand, where it became the second-highest grossing film of all time. Its popularity spread to the US, where THE IRON LADIES won the Audience Award for best film at several major festivals, including the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and The New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

This year’s festival is still a project of the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group (WPIRG) with support from the UW Federation of Students, Princess Cinema, Generation X, and Club Ren.

Rainbow Reels was inspired by our queer friends at OPIRG-Kingston and their Reel Out!