Film Night at Pride London Festival Celebrating LLFF's 25th Anniversary

  • Event

Film Night at Pride London Festival Celebrating LLFF's 25th Anniversary

Mon, 07/18/2016 - 19:00 to Tue, 07/19/2016 - 20:45

MEDIAQUEER.CA is proud to collaborate with Pride London Festival to host the London Lesbian Film Festival (LLFF) in bringing you a program that celebrates 25 years of queer love and lesbian films in Southwest Ontario. Since 1991, LLFF’s mission has been to show the best, boldest and wittiest of Sapphic tales and, this year, the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec has been digging through their archives to highlight the festival’s continuous support for lesbian cinematic herstory in Canada. More than a retrospective, the program will include new-to-London videos by Deanna Bowen and Michelle Mohabeer along with festival favourites Shawna Dempsey + Lorri Millan, as well as hidden gems from the early years of the festival (Anne Golden and Jeanne Crépeau). This FREE/PWYC 50-minute program propels the audience along three decades of daring lesbian filmmaking - through funny shorts and touching personal stories. Join us on this journey Monday July 18, 7PM at Rainbow Cinemas to see what makes our big Canadian lesbian family a truly beautiful one. Montreal artist Dayna McLeod (director of the knee-slapping Watching Lesbian Porn) will be present for the screening and Q&A. Curated by Patricia Ciccone, Jordan Arseneault, Rox Corriveau, and Thomas Waugh, this screening is made possible by support from the Canada Council for the Arts and is presented as part of the official Pride London Festival program available at pridelondon.ca/events/PrideFilmNight. We are thrilled to share in the Pride London Festival’s mission of promoting unity, inclusion, and awareness of sexual and gender diversity for their 2016 edition.

MEDIAQUEER.CA X Pride London Festival for LLFF’s 25th Anniversary w/ guest artist Dayna McLeod

Followed by: Pride London Festival’s selection of Canadian & international LGBT short films co-presented by MediaQueer, featuring works by Trevor Anderson, Wayne Yung and many more!

Pride London Festival “Film Night” Mon. 18 July 2016, 7pm Rainbow Cinemas, 355 Wellington St, London, ON.          

We’re Talking Vulva by Shawna Dempsey + Lorri Millan

1990 / 5 / CA / English / Video Pool

This short music video by Shawna Dempsey has charmed festival goers for more than 25 years. Hilarious in its performance and radical in its discourse, We’re Talking Vulva puts the vagina at the center of this powerful public service announcement. 

 L’Usure / By Attrition by Jeanne Crépeau

1986 / 8 / CA / French / Box Films

Two women meet out in the streets of Montreal in this wordy and surprising break-up film by one of Québec’s best lesbian filmmakers, presented at the inaugural edition of the LLFF in 1991

Sadomasochism by Deanna Bowen

1998 / 14 / CA / English

In Sadomasochism, Deanna Bowen mixes historical images with sexual symbolisms and offers a complex work that intertwines pleasures and pain, past and present. (A note that this short may not be suitable for young audiences as it involves an account of a sexual violence).

Brothers by Anne Golden

1998 / 6 / CA / English / Groupe Intervention Vidéo

Two lesbian brothers live a predictable life: they do the same tasks repeatedly, day after day. However, when the night comes, their lives are anything but ordinary. Anne Golden and frequent collaborator Lorri Millan explore butch life in a humorous manner in this GIV-produced international success.

Two/Doh by Michelle Mohabeer

1996 / 5 / CA / English / CFMDC

Erotic moments between Mohabeer and her lovers are intercut with Super8 footage of queer people of color celebrating in a Pride march. Still lives of a seashell and pomegranates laid out on a tapestry betoken perennial motifs of women’s sexuality.

Watching Lesbian Porn by Dayna McLeod

2001 / 10 / CA / English / Groupe Intervention Vidéo

Can feminism be used as a form of lesbian foreplay? Playing with the tensions between concealment and visibility and critical feminist theories and pornographic stimulations, Montreal artist Dayna McLeod becomes an unruly mediator between the two.