SATURDAY MAY 28
5:00pm
TBLB Cinema 1
5:30pm
TBLB Cinema 2
Queer Video Mentorship Project
Florent: Queen of the Meat Market
Following the success of last year’s Legacy Video Project—a special multi-generational edition of the Queer Youth Digital Video Project— Inside Out has established the Queer Video Mentorship Project. Consisting of two seniors and five youths, this year’s participants are passionate new artists with a vision. Over the past five months, they have journeyed together uncovering the skills, joys and trials of video- and filmmaking in order to create short videos that both challenge and touch us. The program, proudly co-presented by Inside Out and Charles Street Video, lies at the heart of the queer Canadian film and video community.
David Sigal
How To Stop A Revolution
Spirit
A fictional narrative explores the ways divide-and-conquer work on queer, racialized bodies.
She lay there almost completely immobile, her soul sequestered, gathering herself to make the first move…
Kenji Tokawa Canada 2011 video 7 min
MY FATHER, MARIA CALLAS AND ME
Annette Clough Canada 2011 video 7 min
A daughter turns a queer eye on a father’s life.
Reflections from a Park Bench
Peter Morris Canada 2011 video 7 min
City parks are playgrounds for the mind.
Sarah
Ciiku Thuo Canada 2011 video 7 min
Experience the true stories of two queer Gikuyu women who have never met.
Fairamay Canada 2011 video 7 min
Im-pass
Jacub Fernandes Canada 2011 video 7 min
Worlds collide as two racialized trans men face the challenges of heteronormativity.
Working It Out
Matt Apedaile Canada 2011 video 7 min
This short takes a look at how work is a factor in people’s lives: how they approach it and where they find themselves now. This film examines five young adults on their own paths in work and in life—an experiment for the filmmaker and the people in it, working it out.
USA 2010 video 89 min Fashion, fun, pop culture, subculture, food, activism and the joy of the human spirit come together in David Sigal’s fabulous documentary about the famous all-night Florent diner located in the meat-packing district of New York City. Established in 1985, when the meat-packing district was home to a handful of leather and fetish bars; transvestite and transsexual sex workers, and the meat-packing warehouses themselves, Florent the restaurant was the brainchild of activist, artist and conservationist Florent Morellet, who envisioned a simple place where people could meet in a movement of inclusivity. What started as a simple idea exploded into an all-out juggernaut, a happening, a symbol of freedom and honesty and unity. At any given time, one might find a drag king perched at the counter, eating a grilled cheese sandwich while sitting next to an elderly couple who are having coffee and cake, along with any of the hundreds of actors and rock stars who frequented the place—Bowie and Iman, Madonna, Johnny Depp, Julianne Moore, Isaac Misrahi, Diane von Furstenberg, the Olsen twins—sharing a booth with a troupe of can-can dancers. Sigal’s Florent takes us from the restaurant’s inception in the roaring eighties to its ultimate closure in 2008. The film explores what the restaurant had come to mean to the Pride and HIV/AIDS movements, and, eventually, to the conservation movement, as Morellet fights to preserve the historical authenticity of the meat-packing district, which had become suffocated by expensive storefronts and designer restaurants. When Florent’s lease comes up for renewal, Morellet must make the difficult decision to either close the restaurant or pay $40,000 per month in rent. What began as a simple idea transformed over twenty-three years into a phenomenon, a force that strove to bring joy, political awareness, activism, and socially conscious advertising to the hearts and minds of the world around it.
Canadian Premiere
This program is rated 14A
Ignite your passion for queer cinema.
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