The MIX Festival always has fervently supported artists, makers and performers in their individual or collective quests for self and identity. Many of those artists, queer and straight, have in their lives and practices challenged the nature and condition of “I.”
The shorts in this program, however, are distinctly more interested in those questions pertaining to “You and I,” and the commitment of separate selves to one large task: creating and sustaining a shared life. Whether driven by emotional, sexual or practical needs, here the subjects, both real and fictional, confront themselves, their partners, the camera and us to open up about what they (and also we) really want from a relationship. For self, or for the self outside: For whom or what in this world are lovers truly searching?
Curated by the Festival Programming Committee.
TRT: 79 min.
Doce e Salgado (Sweet & Salty)
Chico Lacerda, 2007, Brazil, film, color, sound, 7 min.
Two teenagers, friends from school, discover desire.
The Shape of a Heart
Leslie K. Satterfield, 2007, USA, film, B&W, sound, 9 min.
What can be created or destroyed within one’s own personal beliefs? A thoughtful examination of our lusts for love, creation and loss.
brb
Doug Ischar, 2007, USA, video, color, sound, 19 min.
Text conversations between two enamoured queer men. The image track provides, metaphorically, what is absent in the dialogue.
Postscript
Za Martohardjono, 2007, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
Eiji’s last visit to her ex’s apartment becomes a bizarre and surreal attempt to collect the physical remnants of their past.
From Alex to Alex
Alison S. M. Kobayashi, 2006, Canada, video, color, sound, 7 min.
In the fall of 2003 I found a letter on the Winston Churchill Blvd. QEW overpass. It was labeled “From: Alex To: Alex.” This is a film based on the contents of that letter.
The Pull
Andy Blubaugh, 2008, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
Dissecting one very unorthodox relationship, to reveal the difficulties inherent in all relationships when the litmus test for romance is being together forever.
Falling
Za Martohardjono, 2008, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
A conversation on memory, vertigo and love serves as a soundscape for a woman’s discovery of abandoned playgrounds and rooftops on a hot day in August.
In Every Dream Home a Heartache
John Caffrey, 2007, Canada, film, color, sound, 3 min.
Kids on TV and Johannes Zits collaborated on this music video art piece. The video takes the song’s plotline of a rich man falling in love with rubber doll and uses it to critique queer consumerism and gay-demographic advertising resulting in the subversion of desire into fetishization of new condos and lavish furnishings. KOTV’s John Caffery portrays the green-screen-painted rubber doll wearing the gay-porn projection by Johannes, while KOTV’s Minus Smile sings the part of the protagonist whose alienation eventually drives him mad.
LezBros
Brynn Gelbard, Melinda Bagatelos, Lisa Donohue & Dara Sklar, 2008, Canada, video, color, sound, 12 min.
The unique friendship between guys and dykes is revealed in a sassy blend of faux anthropology, reality TV and techno pop music.
For a Relationship
Jim Verburg
2007, Canada, video, color, sound, 4 min.
A beautiful and visually daring work in which the maker sorts through two years of photographs to make sense of the relationships in his life—sexual, romantic and familial—ties that bind and blend together in this intimate reflection on love, art and family.