An essay film that reflects on the ongoing history of hammams and bathhouse culture in a world where homosexuality is both celebrated and condemned. Mindful of the complex relations between histories of male-to-male sex and histories of empire, the film engages various archives to create a web of associations that evokes pain, pleasure, and ambivalence.

Lloyd Wong died from AIDS-related illnesses before completing his work about his experiences living with AIDS. Three decades later, this footage resurfaced at the Toronto ArQuives. Combined with fragments of her research notes, the filmmaker reckons with how to inherit material from queer ancestors and explores the meaning of incompleteness.

Archival family videos are delicately woven into this metacinematic project wherein the director has cast an actor to play her estranged mother. In watching as this proxy reads a letter from said matriarch, it becomes clear that sometimes, we don’t have the choice but to undertake reparative relational work on our own.

During the pandemic, a queer couple moves into the long-uninhabited old suburban house formerly occupied by one of their sets of grandparents. In this protracted existential pause, they use various shooting formats and archival material to materialize the generational tensions that stir in the shadows.