Open events

A screening/panel for Congress 2023, featuring new works by BIPOC alums of the York University MFA program in Production. Co-presented by: Women and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF), Viral Interventions, York's Queer Summer Institute, Department of Cinema & Media Arts, Sensorium: The Centre for Digital Technology, Archive/Counter Archive, Hemispheric Encounters, and Sexuality Studies. Curated by Mary Bunch & John Greyson, moderated by Alison Duke

In this moment of accelerating visibility and violence, how do queer/trans artists put our worlds on screen? For some, the act of the procession -- gestural, flamboyant, performative, both in the street and home -- can also be a politics of resistance, a poetics of agency. This panel/screening will feature new queer/trans hybrid films that navigate issues of the procession, testing tactics of performance, hybridity, transgression, and the translocal. Following the screening, the artists will talk about their 'processions' with moderator Alison Duke.

UNTITLED, Ostoro Petahtegoose (2022, 3 min). Digital performance confronting discourses about Trans-Indigenous sex work.
KAILI, Leena Manimekalai (2022, 10 min). On the eve of Pride, the goddess explores downtown Toronto (Kaili has been the target of a global Hindu fundamentalist censorship campaign, accusing Manimekalai of blasphemy)
BUTCH, Lokchi Lam (2022, 6 min). A talking boob struggles with desire, identity and gender in the boxing ring.
SWORDS & TRANSVESTIS, Ribamar Oliveros (2022, 5 min). Trans brincante performer Pinto at the centre of her local Reisado festival in north-eastern Brazil.
I AM YOUR GHOST, lee williams boudakian (2021, 10 min). Three generations Armenian immigrants navigate rituals of grief and gender.
OF WHAT DEATH WE DIE, Esery Mondesir (2022, 8 min.) Mondesir searches for memories of his dad, who died of AIDS in 1980 in Port-au-Prince.
CALL ME UNCLE, Amil Shivji (2022, 8 min.) Tanzanian queer singer Tofa Jaxx writes a song about life of HIV/Trans activist Aunty Ali.
MELA JALOOS, Abdullah Quereshi (2022, 12 min). Queer/trans futures collide at the Madho Lal Hussain shrine in Lahore.