Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries

Image of butterflies
Friday, January 23, 2015 - 2:00pm to Saturday, January 24, 2015 - 12:00am

This groundbreaking series of events brings together academics, artists, activists, and community members as they discuss the contributions of queer Filipinos/as to Canadian culture and society.

EVENTS CONFERENCE & RECEPTION
January 23, 2015. 9 am – 7 pm
100 McCaul Street, Room 190

FILM SCREENING
January 24, 2015. 6 pm to 9 pm
The 519 Church St Community Ctr.

ART EXHIBIT:
VISUALIZING THE INTIMATE
January 23 – February 15, 2015.
Hours, 9am - 5pm
Open Gallery, 49 McCaul St.

Venue & Address: 
100 McCaul Street, Room 190
Website: 
http://www.queerfilipinosincanada.ca www.facebook.com/events/1390559501235262/

Monitor 11: South Asian Experimental Film + Video Call for Submissions

Mosaic with the work monitor
Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - 4:00am to Monday, November 3, 2014 - 5:00am

Deadline: November 3, 2014, 5:00 p.m.

 

Submissions are now open for our annual experimental film and video screening program, Monitor 11.

Monitor is dedicated to the presentation of experimental short films and videos by and/or about South Asians from Canada and around the world. We invite independent and innovative short films and videos that explore the aesthetic and form of the moving image and its relation to narrative. Monitor encourages new, experimental and risk-taking work that challenges the viewer’s active engagement.

For Monitor 11, curators Leila Pourtavaf and Azar Mahmoudian invite filmmakers and artists to submit work based on the theme, “These Monsters are Real”, a nod to riot grrrl band Heavens to Betsy. The theme can be read as a playful insistence on fantasy as a legitimate mode of operation, but also question how we can still claim a space for the imaginary, and the make-believe, when the most monstrous acts have become a part of our everyday reality.

How do we realize and name trauma to normalize it? How does it haunt us? How do our fantasies return as the real? How do we build fictions that tell the stories of our lived realities? And finally, how do we fantasize our way out?

Guidelines:

Works must be under 20 minutes and produced during, or after 2012.
Submissions from first time directors, and students are welcome. Artist fees will be paid.

Submissions must include all of the following:

• Name of artist or director
• Full contact information (address, phone, email, website)
• Title of work
• Date of production (No earlier than 2012)
• Brief synopsis of the work (300 words max)
• Brief biography of the artist (150 words max)
• Artist CV
• High-resolution production stills (300dpi)

Venue & Address: 
Mail-In Submissions: SAVAC – MONITOR 11 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 450 Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada
Website: 
http://savac.net/monitor-11-south-asian-experimental-film-video/
Email: 
<p><strong>Email Submissions:</strong></p> <p>submissions@savac.net</p> <p><strong>Contact Sharlene Bamboat:</strong><br /> Artistic Director,&nbsp;SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre)<br /> p: 416.542.1661<br /> e: sharlene@savac.net</p>
Cost: 
Free

RICHARD FUNG RECEIVES SSHRC FUNDING FOR RE:ORIENTATIONS

Still from Richard Fung's film Orientations. Image courtesy Richard Fung.
Still from Richard Fung's film Orientations. Image courtesy Richard Fung.

Richard Fung, a video artist and an Associate Professor in OCAD U’s Faculty of Art, is the recipient of a major Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight grant for RE:ORIENTATIONS, a project that revisits the interview subjects from his ground-breaking 30-year-old documentary filmOrientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians (1985). The grant is one of two awarded to OCAD U (the other project funded is David McIntosh’s QUIPUCAMAYOC).

Fung’s project will reposition the original film’s themes and examine important shifts both in the community and in the greater international context. The grant will help fund project development for four years and is valued at $149,023.

“In Canada LGBTQ people have come a long way in gaining rights and protections, but these advances, even though freshly won, are being used by conservative elements to justify Western domination of ‘backward nations.’ At that the same time governments in countries such as Uganda and Russia are defining national identity by attacking queer citizens,” says Fung. As a result of what he considers worrying developments and the role of rights in north-south politics, Fung decided to look at his original film again. “For me, as a Canadian of Chinese descent from the Caribbean, it’s important to examine transnational themes.”

Part of the project of the new film and research will also be to re-interview subjects. Fung plans to capture their reactions as they watch footage of themselves onscreen in the original film and ask them to describe who that person was and who they are today.

“Thirty years ago was a very different time. It was before any of the rights were granted in Canada and the community has changed,” Fung says. “In the first video there was a marked sense of optimism around coming out and making a difference. The original film was about sexual desire and representation, but the issues relevant to the LGBTQ community today and how they feel have shifted.”

After 30 years, the 14 original subjects of the film have moved on in their lives and work. Many of the subjects went on to highly successful political careers. Alan Lee became one of Toronto’s leading HIV doctors, works with refugees and undocumented immigrants and was also the first out national president of the Chinese Canadian National Council. Mary-Woo Sims became the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Tony Souza was the first race relations advisor to the Board of Education. Sadly, three of the interview subjects died of AIDS-related causes.

Fung’s original film was financed with the support of a community grant. “I’m not sure this work would have been supported by the research council in 1985,” he says. “Now SSHRC is interested in how the research information we’re finding circulates as knowledge, so we’re going to travel with the work and produce collaborations. The purpose of the grant is also to look at how university research can inform what’s happening on the ground in communities, which is why dissemination is important.”

Fung is working with a research and creative team on the project including a creative editor and cinematographer together with academic collaborators from the University of Toronto and York University, and both undergraduate and graduate research assistants. The project will culminate in a national tour of the film, together with a website, scholarly articles and a book of interviews and essays, which are all intended to foster collaborations between academia and community.

About Richard Fung

Richard Fung is a Toronto-based video artist, writer, theorist and educator. His film work is intended to challenge and covers subjects ranging from the role of the Asian male in gay pornography to colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, AIDS and his own family history. He is an intellectual who pushes forward the debates about queer sexuality, Asian identity and the uneasy borderlands of culture and politics.

Orientations was his first film, created in 1985 as a pioneer project in response to dominant impressions and assumptions about homosexual identity. It featured interviews with 14 lesbians and gay men with diverse backgrounds, lifestyle experiences and outlooks.

Learn More

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) 

Original Orientations film 

Richard Fung website

Richard Fung faculty biography 

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