The Coming Out - Juan Antonio Llamas Rodriguez (2008)
Madonna, Madonna - Grey Muldoon (2005)
In The Dark - Niko Blaxxx (2005)
Reflections From a Park Bench - Peter Morris (2011)
Genetic - Shoshana Magnet (2003)
Meet the Filmmaker: Shoshana Magnet
Favourite memory from the project...
My favourite memory from the project is when my mothers were walking down the street in Toronto right after the screening at InsideOut, and a random passerby said: "Oh! You're the dancing moms from Genetic." It was so exciting - I felt like they were film stars and I was a famous director.
What are your current/recent career endeavours?
InsideOut got me started making videos. Since then, I've made many more videos about my family. I received a minor in Feminist Digital Video Production as part of my PhD. I would never have thought to pursue this line of education if I hadn't been taught how to make Genetic by Mariangela Piccione, Kagiso Lesego Molope and Sarah Sharkey Pearce. I'm now a Women's Studies professor at the University of Ottawa, and part of what helped me land my job is that I was interested in teaching other young women to make feminist videos.
Words of wisdom for the next group of participants...
I'd suggest making work that speaks to the intersections of our queer lives - I feel a real craving for work that thinks about how racism, ableism and class also shape sexual identities.
Favourite queer film? / First queer film you ever saw?
The first queer film I ever saw was shown to me by my feminist mentor, Janice Hladki, who is herself a feminist performance artist. It was "You Bug Me" by Allyson Mitchell. The film has basically only three frames. It is about that simple moment when you suddenly know you want to exit a relationship. It was electrifying, but also low-tech. It both reached inside and touched my core and also seemed to suggest that making a video was something that even I could do.
Cozen - Ali Naqvi (2010)
Hey Maybe - Cam Matamoros (2004)
Haram - Mohamed Ali (2007)
Jet Lag - Luka Sidaravicius (2007)
As-Phyx-It - Jamie Ross (2005)
Meet the Filmmaker: Jamie Ross
Favourite memory from the project... The queer youth video project was amazingly helpful and inspiring, and without it I may not have ever been empowered to go about claiming my role as an artist, and with the confidence to do it without art school. Revisiting this work seven years after its creation raises many feelings. First, I'm surprised and ashamed I felt entitled to use Inuit throat-singing music utterly decontextualized, as though including the musicians' names in the credits somehow erased the cultural appropriation. I think I thought it sounded cool. I try my best to analyse the work of someone in his last year of high school, in his 2nd or 3rd year out of the closet, someone who had come happily to terms with his sexual identity but who had very little interest in or contact with queer culture of any sort outside our subculture. Me and my friends were punk rock, and what representations of gay community I saw on TV and movies left me pretty alienated. Back in 2005, I was worried that because I was lanky and hated electronic music, I would never find a place; for those reasons but also because I saw the culture as rooted in apathetic, vapid over-consumption. It would be years before I felt a part of the history and traditions of this community, before I would come to understand the heterogeneity of the so-called 'mainstream gay culture,' which, according to the film, 'confuse and disturb'. If only the video had been about representations of this community and its effect on 18 year old me, it could be so easily redeemed.
Representations of our communities in mass media, and our most public celebrations, still white-out the histories I've come to vindicate and claim - and although I sort of missed the mark with As-Phyx It, I still hit the target. Assimilation has always worked by scaring people into behaving likemindedly, and I was reacting to that fear, resisting angrily the messages targeting my self-esteem. This piece helped me define my anxieties and to regain control over them. I'm not ungrateful for queer representation in the media or for the urban downtown in which I grew up, but this was my experience. The final title in this piece reads 'Make Liberation Interesting', setting the authenticity of beach bonfire bacchanalia against the lasers of a drag show full of sexy male bodies. The irony of it all is that I've since performed many times in drag, and even for a period ran a group of drag social interventionist drag jogging club - the Homosexualist Surrealist Politifit Indoc-train-ation Station! In reality, I would later come to understand much more about our arts and our history; I would come to the realization that I was railing against the portrayal of these arts, not their fundamental nature. I would realize that Toronto's gay ghetto was the site of the riot in 1981 where queers and their allies took to the streets to fight back against the police that had raided their spaces, that the gay enclave on Church Street didn't come close to containing or representing us all: that the queer community was multiple and vibrant; that there were other nerdy anarchist artists out there who hated disco way more than I did. And I would come to realize that my cultural antecedents had worked very hard to make me feel included, and that the video project itself was an emanation of the very community at whom I aimed my churlish cannons. And like wise grandparents, the video project mentors saw me including shocking, violent imagery directed towards the vaguely-defined disco-dancing mainstream (the motives for the inclusion of which are actually beyond me), and they still encouraged me to express myself as I felt I needed to at that time and place. And for that, I am truly thankful.
I'm amused at the mixing of metaphors and the clumsiness of it all but As-Phyx It remains as one of the most honest documents of my life at that age, long before my creative ambitions took centre stage. It is a record of a formative period in my life that I cherish dearly and at the end of the day, I'm still glad to affix my name to this angst-soaked old thing. I would go on to start planning and executing video projects almost immediately after finishing this one, and the work has gone on to play in Canada and around the world. I'd start printing zines and other writing projects, screenprinting, planning performance pieces and documentaries in the intervening years. And although the work with Inside Out wasn't my first brush with a camera, it was definitely a memorable and an encouraging one. You should've seen me beaming, too, when by complete chance I was in London when As-Phyx It was screened at the British Film Institute and I took the stage to give a question & answer session!
How I Learned to Speak - Christopher Douglas (2005)
Committed to Recall - Chelsey Lichtman (2007)
This is Just to Say - Sharon Sliwinski (1999)
Meet the Filmmaker: Sharon Sliwinski
Favourite memory from the project... The finished videos from the very first project were screened at what was then the brand new, huge theatre at the corner of Richmond and John Streets (what is now called the Scotiabank Cineplex, but at the time was called the Paramount as I recall). There were hundreds of people in attendance which was terrifying and thrilling all at once. I will never forget the moment of standing up in front of the sold out crowd and -- for the very first time -- feeling a sense of great sympathy and empathy. I grew up in a relatively small town and had a rough time coming out. But suddenly all these strangers--hundreds of them!--were all looking at me with such curiosity and warmth. I'll never forget those faces and the feeling of being embraced by that room. It was amazing -- a prototype of the sense of "it gets better."
How has the project helped your growth? This is very hard for me to put into words, but the project literally saved my life. Inside Out embraced all the participants in that first year in a way that made it seem possible to just be in the world -- to exist just as we were. For me personally, it felt like having a protective parent that I was sorely lacking -- like someone telling you "you're ok, you'll make it through." But more specifically, the project gave us the tools and a venue to express ourselves. This was inexpressibly important: our pain and our desires mattered to someone! So the project taught me that there really is a common humanity and that the commonality we share is the need each of us have to tell our stories and to have them heard and received by others.
Have you been involved with other arts/film projects since then?
I did continue to make short videos for a few years after the project. Then I gradually became interested in photography which is one of the subjects I research and write about now. But just recently I've returned to that early joy and wonder of working with video -- largely because of the ease of having high definition video at your finger tips in the iPhone. These videos are usually just for fun these days, a bit of silliness with friends. But I have to say, watching young people use this new technology is amazing and I am beginning to try to think about ways to build it into the classroom.
What are your current/recent career endeavors? I'm a professor of visual culture at the University of Western Ontario.
Words of wisdom for the next group of participants... Enjoy.
Favourite queer film? / First queer film you ever saw? That's a tough question! Especially because, as many of us do, I was long surreptitiously watching film with a queer eye, so to speak. So it's hard to say was what constitutes a "queer film" in this respect. But without being too coy about it, I can admit I adore Ma Vie En Rose (1997) and occasionally I get the undergrads that I teach to watch it -- they almost invariably love it too.
