On June 7, the 9th Queer City Cinema festival opened in
Regina. Run every two years, this festival was created by curator Gary Varro
and is named after this city's nickname, "the Queen City". This
year's events take place at Neutral Ground, an artist-run centre art gallery in
the heart of downtown. These are some of my observations on the dozen videos
shown in the first screening on opening
night.
Tashina by
Caroline Monnet contained many strong visuals. She juxtaposed the rigid
domineering man-made structures such as escalators, bridges, rows of book
shelves, and hallways filled with pipes against less dominant background scenery;
water and snow. The story, told in voice
over, discusses home as a place of sanity, and the journey away from it is
punctuated by foreboding music. Education is not an end but a means to bring
an end to the poverty stricken reserve life. A phone call to her grandfather,
ending in a disconnect, is a perfect metaphor for the frustration and anxiety
of her urban transition.
Kyisha Williams video Red
Lips mixes straight forward interviews with a number of women, each audibly
identifying themselves as black and queer (along with other individual specifics)
with text and extreme close ups of red lips which act as the narrator. Stories
revolve around unfair incarceration of black or aboriginal women and declarations
of the oppressive nature of the prison institution. The close up lips simultaneously
fragment/dehumanize the body while making the voice universal, individual, and specific.
"You're just not what we were looking for" is a
repeated sentiment in How to Stop a
Revolution by Kenji Tokawa. Again, fragmentation seemed a dominant motif as
bits of story are either told in voice over or demonstrated in re-enactments. With each story interrupted and left
incomplete, the overall sense of her
universe is one of animosity or indifference. When she finally declares that
"The walls are crumbling in" we share the feeling of being an
outsider, of the world simply not being big enough to fit everyone's
individuality into.
The Dance by
Bandit Queen was the only example in this screening of what was once a dominant
trope at queer festivals, the graphic and often violent depiction of sex. These
re-enactments of Afghan prison camps are chilling, not so much from their
realism but for the symbolic absence of identity of the aggressors. Even the
camera sits alone on a chair, having no witness to hold their eye to it.
Filmmaker and artist Allyson Mitchell is the subject of Lesley
Loksi Chan and Dilia Narduzzi's video Making
Ladies. While this is basically a traditional documentary format program
(interview with b-roll of the artwork being discussed), the subject matter was
highly engaging, thought provoking, and humorous. Mitchell is passionate and
articulate as she discusses her views on the need for her sensual nine foot
high lesbian sasquatches to attract and confront the viewer, her championing of
the honor of (feminine) craft in a world which prioritizes (masculine) Art. and
her interest in the emotions imbued into hand-made objects which she reuses in
her work.
Candy Fox, a local film student, was in attendance with her
first festival entry, Being Two Spirited.
It features interviews with a number of people discussing their childhoods and coming
to discover their strengths of being two spirited. It is a call to all of them
to take on the obligations this brings, to be proud, to be leaders. Fox
answered questions about her video, describing it as being motivated by her desire
to answer questions she posed to herself about her culture, her identity, and
her past. Discussion after the screening was enthusiastic, focussing primarily
on the many connotations of being "two spirited".
Seeking Single White
Male by Vivek Shraya is a visually interesting study of the self identity
as oversized text questions and criticizes the various photos of the filmmaker
as changing hair, lighting, and makeup alters who he seems to be to an
outsider's eyes. This is certainly a question for everyone today as our image
to the outside world shrinks to a one inch frame on your social media page.
Farrah Khan uses pixelation to create a frenetic and comical
journey in her video Cab Ride. The
mixture of approaches, animation, live action (feet washing) and voice over
text evokes the early works of Ann Marie Fleming as Khan weaves a tale about
being questioned by a traditional Pakistani driver about her views on arranged marriage
(to which she relies that she" believes in love"). The most touching moment comes at the end when
she is finally free of the cab driver's interrogation
with her sexuality and true opinions remaining safely guarded. The image of the animated moss and paper cab is obliterated by
hands filled with turmeric which stain the tabletop and leaving a stronger signifier
of her heritage than the one she was trying to erase. Only then does she reveal
to us the true trouble in her heart; "I know being a lesbian is not a sin.
I'm just a Muslim daughter who wishes her father would call".
Mary by Kent
Monkman is a meticulously created film which features an evocatively dressed First
Nations man in a sexy red dress and high heels. As he approaches and removes
the shoe and sock from a wealthy white man, text panels question a forgotten
promise. When finally the mascara tears run onto the man's foot, a final
didactic spells out the metaphor, of the miscommunication of the treaties and
the difficulties of the Indian Act. With such precision of lighting and design,
the margin between love and fear seemed microscopic.
Don't Ask Don't Tell
GAY GAY GAY by Dayna McLeod is one of those videos where the idea and
description (all the gay references in an episode of Boston Legal are extracted
and cut together rapidly) is inadequate to express the savage humour, energy,
and ridiculousness of this very short work.
Tina Takemoto's video Looking
for Jiro begins as a story about a
man locked up during the internment of Japanese people in America in the 1940s
but slowly creeps into being a performance. The white clad man, superimposed
atop images of these camps or by early cinema images of body builders, is
simply sweeping at first but eventually he begins to sculpt muscular arms for
himself. In the end, the camp is not the prison, it is his desires and unachievable
goals which keep him oppressed.
Last Kiss by
Charles Lum is a study of graffiti on a memorial for Oscar Wilde. As a bearded man kisses the marble, we are told that the
object will be covered with glass and will, therefore, be untouchable in the future.
Flashes of pop culture, including Wonder
Woman, flash past at the midpoint, suggesting the far reaching impact of Wilde
on who we all are today. History will now be guarded, safe and dead.
