Visions of Care and Collaboration and how queer filmmakers translate this theme into eight fresh shorts #TQFF

Several queer and indigenous filmmakers submitted their shorts to this Torontonian festival that took place mid-March. The selection of the final eight shorts presented to the audience is exemplary of their experiences and this year’s theme: Visions of Care and Collaboration. 

By Eliana Aleman Reategui

The outside of the Tranzac Club (Eliana Aleman Reategui/CanCulture)

This year from  March 14 to 17, the Toronto Queer Film Festival hosted the seventh installment of their festival in the borough of the Annex. The theme for this year’s festival is Visions of Care and Collaboration.

All featured in the short film compilation titled Who Am I Growing Into?, the shorts-files touched upon themes of reliance on one another, one’s passion for their culture, and overall just an earnest portrayal of the queer and indigenous experience. Visuals were striking and captivating, and although there was a wide range of mastery over the medium, the sentiments that all eight filmmakers conveyed were present in the room.

Headdress (2022)

We started off the screening with the short Headdress directed by Tai LeClaire. It told the stylized story of a queer native person and his internal battle when faced with cultural appropriation. It was certainly technically impressive, with many different settings and props, but sometimes the comedy felt a little juvenile. Personally, it seemed too reminiscent of Smosh comedy or even a dragged-out SNL bit. Maybe I am chronically online and can’t appreciate short films on a budget anymore, but the writing reminded me of an Anna Akana YouTube video or a PAINT cover. Gave me the feel that it was quite dated, somewhere around 2015 to 2016, but made in 2022.

Hi, My Name is Lilliana (2020)

Hi, My Name is Lilliana directed by Liliana Rice, is a biographical short about her experience as an Indigenous filmmaker and her worries about entering the film industry. I am assuming this was an admission video for an animation program. It was cute, but also something I don’t think belonged in the lineup. The animation style is reminiscent of the “draw my life” trend on youtube several years ago, putting little doodles and moving words on top of old family pictures and memories. This is more of a vlog than a short film and although the message of the film is touching and important, the form is simply too distracting.

Bright Heart (2023)

Bright Heart, directed by Tarek Lakhrissi, was an intriguing odyssey that takes the audience on an immersive trip across the streets of Paris. I saw what the short was trying to do: immerse us in this Lynchian journey of self-discovery. However, the scenes go on for way too long and even though I know the point is to keep the audience at bay, it never lets you in enough to care about his extravagant encounters. Very French.

Shedding (2023)

Directed by Tziara Reyes, Shedding is a short, intimate documentary about a non-binary person finding their identity and how that ties their hair ties into this equation. One of my most disappointing watches in the repertoire. I sympathize with the weight of shaving your head, especially as a queer person, and how that can help you align with your gender identity. Still, there was a lack of emotionality to the actual action. It’s a very emotional process (and even the director put their two cents on what it meant for them to shave their head a couple months back), but there was not a major visual contrast in the subject’s before and after. This hindered the impact of the action greatly.

Punk Fish (2023)

Punk Fish, directed by Miguel Maldonado, follows transgender punk musicians and their new journey to find themselves in the British underground scene. It's pungent and true to its subject matter, but the protagonist feels swallowed at times. While undoubtedly eye-catching, loud and possessing a gripping presence, the protagonist was sometimes drowned by his eccentric environment. The introduction of his band members made me rapidly lose interest in his international student experience, and more invested in his backup band. How did that woman have two master's degrees already? Nevertheless, it served a good purpose, as it captured someone’s life during their youth.

Once in a Red Moon (2022)

Directed by Yi Shi, Once in a Red Moon is a lovely romance short that touches upon the immigrant experience and how that seeps into romantic and familial relationships. It felt very Toronto-esque and reminisced of summer walks through Dundas and Spadina. The delivery of the actresses didn’t quite do it for me every time— some lines just came off awkward or simply unnatural, but overall, it was a cute story with a satisfying ending that made me miss my relatives back home. Sweet treat. 

Lullaby (2023)

Lullaby directed by Irène-Kimberley Valin-Awashish was such a visually stunning portrait of the Indigenous experience in modern Canada. You can see that there was a lot of care put into the locations. The protagonist stares directly into the camera as life moves around her at a quick pace. Her stillness was a strong contrast to the craziness of present-day society. Sometimes, the voiceover would be too overpowering to the visuals, but the message was still heartfelt and came across clearly. Low shutter speed shots of the dance were breathtaking. I do wish there wasn’t the face of the protagonist in the introductory shot of the dances; they stood better on their own. Impressive film.

I AM HOME (2022)

I AM HOME, directed by Kymon Greyhorse (sick name btw), is a short film with jaw-dropping visuals and a moving and emotional voiceover narrating the evolution of Indigenous traditions and their way of living throughout centuries. The decision to majoritarily use slow motion and to opt for portrait shots really elevated the emotionality of the film. The most cohesive short of the collection. Sadl,y it was also rather brief, but I was moved by what it conveyed in its short runtime.

This lovely selection of shorts tied together into one cohesive whole: A desperate feeling to tell a story and for the audience to see life the way you experience it; a desire to share different worldviews and life experiences so we can empathize with each other, and an accolade for being collaborators in each other’s stories. 

Experiments in Short Film #TQFF

Stills in Motion: Queer Life in Alternate Forms featured several short films pushing the boundaries of animation and visual effects.

By Tia Harish

Many films are available to view on the film festival’s website for a short time. The films cover a multitude of topics pertaining to the Queer community, with a wide range of filmmaking techniques not often seen in mainstream media (Tia Harish/CanCulture)

In a crowded room hidden in the eaves of the Annex, the Toronto Queer Film Festival (TQFF) hosted Stills in Motion: Queer Life in Alternate Forms. This collection of short films gave a platform for stories left untold by mainstream media and encouraged unity and empathy with its films. 

The festival is also a platform for experimental films. Alongside other features concerning taboo topics like pornography and religion, this selection of shorts discusses topics like pregnancy and self-reflection in a new light. 

Most of these shorts do not feature live-action video or standard frame rates. This gives the filmmakers much more freedom to do things that just wouldn’t fly in mainstream media. Artists get to take on wackier and more complicated visuals or on the flip side, incredibly simplistic art styles. 

A few stood out for their storytelling and visuals:

Hair to Stay by Pree Rehal (Toronto, ON)

The shortest short film by far, clocking in at under a minute, Hair to Stay was a brilliant start to the series. The biggest laughs of the night came from this claymation short about the social perception of facial hair. Filmmaker Pree Rehal didn’t have a conventional route to filmmaking.  “I didn’t go to school for art things, so I’m self-taught and community-arts-taught,” they said during the Q&A. Their inspiration behind the short film was how Rehal’s childhood bully and crush often made fun of their body hair, specifically their mustache. These days, as a trans person, their mustache is viewed much more positively. The bare-bones dialogue and two short scenes receiving so much laughter and applause only prove how universal this idea of turning something negative into positive, is. 

Boob by Lokchi Lam (Toronto, ON)

This love story between, well, boobs, was oddly heartwarming. The film follows left boob Rocky, as he navigates life on the chest of a trans man while looking for love. As he learns more about what it means to be a man, the audience is invited to question masculinity and its impact as a social construct on men, both cis and trans. On the film’s conception, Lam said “I didn’t set out to make an animation but I wrote a script about breasts and I had to figure out how to actually make it, and I used whatever tools I could.” Lam also takes this opportunity to display genitalia as more than something sexual, rather as something fun and . This is taken even further with a deity-like vagina appearing to give Rocky the Left Boob some advice. The art style is a fun blend of impressionist visuals at a lower frame rate, rounding out the lightheartedness of the film. 

Embrace the Moon by Katrina Pleasance (Vancouver, BC)

Embrace the Moon takes the reader on a sweet, wholesome journey with its storyline packed with symbolism. The playful relationship between a farmer and the Moon Goddess displays queer joy without queer pain. Its biggest appeal was the abundance of queer joy. There was no homophobic dragon to battle— simply the physical barrier between the moon and the Earth, which was freely broken. This left ample time for the main characters to bond and grow, both a tree and their relationship. The Moon Goddess in the story appears to be Chang'e from Chinese mythology. In the mythos, she is believed to be immortal and lives on the moon. Pleasance explained that the art style was “inspired by Chinese shadow puppetry.” The light and delicate music and blending of old and new art styles gave the film a timeless feel.

You are here by Sarah Hill (USA)

Blending stop motion with live action and archival footage, Hill’s You are here treads new ground with their take on pregnancy in trans couples. It flirts with the line between educational and graphic. The visual style is akin to a virtual scrapbook, with mixed media being at the forefront of the storytelling. The story is slightly difficult to follow, due to its nonlinear structure and blending of archival medical films with the present.  It excels in its ability to keep the audience captivated and invoke emotions of sympathy, fear or even discomfort. 

Many films in the collection could be argued as too experimental. This is where one falls into the rabbit hole of what art actually is. Some pieces, like You are here, may use the philosophy that art must make the viewer feel something. Whether that feeling is positive or negative is inconsequential. Other pieces fall into the trap of making people feel things they don’t understand. A number of films had extraordinary visuals that were difficult to comprehend without an explanation. Some pieces were highly personal, and perhaps utilized the philosophy of art for the creator’s sake, rather than the audience’s. The highlights stood out for their clear and entertaining stories. They struck a balance between visual brilliance and high-quality storytelling. The audience wasn’t left particularly confused, but rather left to ponder the concepts of gender, romance and family.

Experimentation can mean a lot of things in the realm of art. These shorts were less like films and more like multimedia explorations in audio-visual storytelling. Some felt like a fever dream, and others may well have been. TQFF as a platform is incredibly valuable for these films to see the light of day. It is with the support from the queer community and film enthusiasts that the festival can keep the lights off and the projectors on.  

Exploring what it means to be free in Freedom From Everything #TQFF

How do we build community when everyone is pitted against each other?

By Sarah Grishpul

Mike Hoolboom’s film Freedom From Everything screens online during the 2024 Toronto Queer Film Festival (Sarah Grishpul/CanCulture Magazine)

“... It has always seemed much easier to murder than to change.”

During an online screening at the 2024 Toronto Queer Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom quotes James Baldwin, along with many other activists, artists and historical figures, in his film Freedom From Everything.

Such a line repeats twice to underscore its importance and connection to the story: The sacrifice of our more vulnerable population in favour of the privileged.

Freedom From Everything is an adaptation of German filmmaker Hito Steyerl’s essay by the same name. By pulling from her passages, splicing together footage from other movies, TV shows, historical recordings and images, computer-generated animations and personal memories, Hoolboom created an essay film jam-packed with philosophical ponderings and critical analyses.

A fair warning, this film is not the type of movie you can put on in the background while folding the laundry or completing other various chores. It’s not so much a typical narrative story but rather a string of musings against a backsplash of idyllic scenes and objects. Instead, Hoolboom invites you to meditate on his musings as his soft, resounding voice guides you through the film. 

Hoolboom compares the many similarities between the public’s behaviour towards the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, of which we are only a few years shy. He points to the striking commonality in the translation of fear to anger. Those who did not understand the virus and the people affected by it turned to hate and accusation as a coping mechanism.

Yet, as he points out in the post-screening Q&A, what made COVID-19 different was the lack of solidarity and community.

The film raises the question: How do you build community when everyone is pitted against each other?

From that point forward, we are taken back in time to the late 1970s and early 1990s when the polarizing Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of Britain. Her stance on society was that there was no such as society. But instead, human beings were responsible for their personal lives and outcomes.

To put it straight: If you’re poor or marginalized—it’s your own fault.

This so-called “freedom” removes blame from the dominant white society over issues of inequality. Because, according to Thatcher, society just doesn’t exist. 

Hoolboom shows how the “virus of neoliberalism” manifested in the so-called “freedom fighters” who staged large protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. The stance of “this disease doesn’t exist because it isn’t directly affecting me,” is a luxury in itself. 

Such individualistic mentalities were as prominent during COVID-19 as they were during the 

AIDS epidemic. As Hoolboom further points out in the Q&A:

“If I get sick, that’s my responsibility. But if you get sick, that's not just your responsibility, but it’s your fault somehow.”

He cites the urge to ignore the problem as a result of a digital, neoliberal form of capitalism. Communication during isolation became a profit for big tech companies. Remember ever using Zoom before the pandemic? Yeah, me neither.

Freelancers, side hustles and the gig economy are all products of capitalism. The “freedom” to not be represented by traditional institutions offers a negative freedom, which pulls people away from any semblance of community. 

Later on, the film dives into the history behind the word “freelancer,” which originates from the medieval ages. They were mercenaries who were not attached to any soldier or government but instead loyal to whoever paid them the most. Remove the horse, armour, and sword, and you’ll see that nothing much has changed since then.

Hoolboom references the role of the “homeless freelancer” in Japanese cinema, known as the “ronin.” One film he calls attention to is Yojimbo, a 1961 western, where a lone samurai ultimately initiates a gang war between two rival capitalist warlords in a small Japanese village.

The role of the freelancer is, at its core, one built on the foundation of independence. Yet, not all freelancers strive to serve the good of the people. Hoolboom interweaves clips of private soldiers in the Iraq occupation and the difficulties the United States military experienced in controlling these freelance mercenaries. Another example of this “negative freedom” is referenced several times throughout the film.

In the end, Freedom From Everything doesn’t serve as a beacon of hope, nor does it provide the answer to these systemic problems, but instead is a bleak reflection of a weakened society encased in selfish desires and governed by greed. I certainly emerged from this screening forced to reckon with my own pursuit of freedom from everything. If anything, the film opens up conversations on how we choose to determine our own future.

Sailor Moon Super Scandalous indeed #TQFF

 They’re revoking my baptismal certificate for this one

By Ella Miller

When the lights went down at the Tranzac theatre on March 15, 2024, the magical girl Sailor Moon underwent a real transformation (Ella Miller/CanCulture Magazine)

As the old saying goes “and on the third day, He rose again and ascended… into debaucherous hilarity.” 

Sailor Moon Super Scandalous: The Yassification of the Christ marks the third installment in Harjot Bal’s Sailor Moon parody series. Making its debut at the Toronto Queer Film Festival (TQFF), the film reworks the 1995 movie, Sailor Moon Super S. 

Instead of being about an alien queen kidnapping Earth’s children, the movie is now about the Sailor Scouts defeating warrior of God and “ba-bortion” protester, Sister Karen and her plot to bring about the rapture by turning “pansexual Wiccan from the future,” Sailor Mini Moon, into a Christian.  

After tackling queer relationships and womanhood in his previous two movies, Bal decided it was time to take on an underlying theme in both of those outings: religion, with the Catholic church providing forbidden fruit that was ripe and ready for picking. 

This was a bold choice for the TQFF both because of how inflammatory the subject matter inherently is and because it prompts the audience to do some serious pondering in dangerous waters: ‘Is my COVID-19 vaccine chip actually a good thing?’; ‘What is the Catholic Church’s stance on edging?’; and ‘How long until Doug Ford realizes that his government helped fund this?’ 

Sailor Moon Super Scandalous: The Yassification of the Christ is firmly rooted in internet culture and the kind of dark humour that was bred on early-noughts anime forums and YouTube. It combines this with post-pandemic memes and musical cues from TikTok’s Hot 100 into a chaotic symphony that would be struck down by the YouTube copyright gods in a millisecond. 

For me, though, the most obvious comparison was ADV’s notorious dub of Ghost Stories, wherein an innocent mystery show was turned into a filthy cult classic by the power of the greatest argument for dubs over subs of all time. 

In the post-screening Q&A, Bal admits to being heavily influenced by the abridged series, but surprisingly, had never seen the Ghost Stories dub until after the first movie came out. 

If you are aware of these properties and have gotten turned off by the comparison, that is understandable. Dark humour that relies on shock value and references to homophobia, dysfunctional relationships, drug use and extremism is not for everyone. 

During my viewing of this film, however, I found the usage of this type of humour to be reclamatory and transformative. 

So frequently we see ‘dark humour’ used as a Trojan horse for flat-out bigotry, but seeing a piece of media created by a queer person of colour at a grassroots 2SLGBTQAI+ event returns dark humour to a purer form: a tool to poke fun at power while confronting your own flaws. 

This is where I get a little “um… actually☝️🤓”, so bear with me. As a certified veteran of Catholic school, I do tend to be a little more persnickety about the representation of Catholicism than most. Forgive me, Father, I want those six years of religion classes to mean something. 

The Catholic Church does not actually use the “kiddie pool” style baptism the film repeatedly claims it does, among other factual inaccuracies (☝️🤓). However, anything about the sex scandals is accurate. Maddeningly accurate. 

Sailor Moon Super Scandalous: The Yassfication of the Christ’s parody of ‘Catholicism’ probably would have been more accurate had it been directed at American Evangelicals and charismatic Christianity. Marjorie Taylor Gre- I mean, Sister Karen is the Republican party’s next presidential nominee, mark my words.  

But, if my biggest complaint about your film is that the Catholic Church was not represented entirely accurately, which weakened the satire–uh… I guess I will take my rosary beads and cry myself to sleep in the confessional. 

Aside from the Catholic Church villainy, the film contains many heartwarming subplots and affecting character arcs. And that is not a joke. 

Tuxedo Mask comes to grips with the fact that he will never be the creatine-munching, crypto bro of Sailor Moon’s dreams. Tyler, the Content Creator, enters his drug experimentation era. Lesbian lovers Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune struggle with fertility treatments.  

All of these plots may seem like one-off gags, but they are actually layered and possess multi-1000-word-essays worth of concepts tackling masculinity, scapegoating and 2SLGBTQIA+ parenting. 

I would like to take a minute to boggle at the technical feats that this film accomplishes. This Sailor Moon parody series is just short of the most ambitious project in the realm of anime since the Rebuild of Evangelion while also being ten times more coherent (but somehow less gay). 

Bal described his creative process during the Q&A as “a beast.” The film took him two months to write by himself. Writing the film involved Bal watching the original movie until his eyes bled (probably) and developing a story that both made sense and fit the lip flaps of the original Japanese. 

Bal then coordinated a team of 17 different people to voice act which took an additional two to three months. None of these people were professional voice actors and that required some serious innovation to make at-home voiceover studios using closets and pillows. 

So, while all credit for the animation remains with the talented artists at Toei Animation, every sound heard in the film, from the passionate magical girl cries to the farts, is a labour of love by the production team. 

All of whom have their names displayed in the credits, accompanied by a song that really had me saying: …hey Siri, what song is this?

‘According to Spotify, “Hit My Spot” by ur pretty is a gay sex anthem about being submissive and breedable, would you like to know more? 

Goddamn this movie.  

Sailor Moon Super Scandalous: The Yassification of the Christ is available in its entirety on Instagram @sailormoonparody.