The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era

The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era returns to the historical moment of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema to investigate the phenomena of queer biopic films produced during the late 1980s–early 1990s. More specifically, the book asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. While film critics and historian typically treat the biopic as a conservative, if not cliché, genre, queer filmmakers have frequently used the biopic to tell stories of queer lives. This project pays particular attention to the genre’s queer resonances, opening up the biopic’s historical connections to projects of education, public health, and social hygiene, along with the production of a shared history and national identity. Queer filmmakers’ engagement with the biopic evokes the genre’s history of building life through the portrayal of lives worthy of admiration and emulation, but it also points to another biopic history, that of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open up the potential for new means of connection and relationality. The book features fresh readings of the cinema of Derek Jarman, John Greyson, Todd Haynes, Barbara Hammer, and Tom Kalin. By calling for a reappraisal of the queer biopic, the book also calls for a reappraisal of New Queer Cinema’s legacy and its influence of contemporary queer film.

Confronting Ambiguity: Reading the Intersection of Racial and Sexual Marginalization in Rex vs Singh and Seeking Single White Male

This paper examines how Canadian filmmakers and artists explore racial and sexual marginalisation in Canada. Two films in particular exemplify different forms of racism towards South Asian immigrants. The first, Rex vs Singh (2008), an experimental documentary produced by John Greyson, Richard Fung, and Ali Kazimi, showcases the ambiguous application of immigration policies to repress South Asian immigration. Through different reconstructed montages, the film confronts these ambiguities in relation to the court case. The second, Seeking Single White Man (2010), a performance-video work by Toronto-based artist Vivek Shraya—South Asian descent, demonstrates not only the dominant racial norms and white normativity in the queer community in Toronto, but also the ambivalence in the performance and in racial identification. I identify ambiguity as the distinct contribution to understanding first: i) how state policies are used for racial and sexual repression, ii) the ways in which identification of racial norms are unstable, iii) and how these norms have been translated into sexual (un)/desirability. The ambiguities evoked by these works provide critical insights to investigate the complexity of racial marginalisation and their intersection with gender/sex normativity.

Canadian Cinema and the Intellectual Milieu

Canadian cinema has evolved precariously between the myth of its encounter with an implacable nature and the sense that it is the product of a deterministic technology. Both positions derive from the Canadian intellectual tradition, particularly as articulated by Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. Frye stands behind Bruce Elder’s work on film philosophy, which, paired with Frye’s notion that movies derive from melodrama, provides a productive framework for understanding the work of both Guy Maddin and John Greyson. Similarly, McLuhan’s writings on technology inform the work of David Cronenberg and Joyce Wieland, while Atom Egoyan has taken up McLuhan’s notion of the global village. Complicating these influences has been Canada’s proximity to the most powerful film empire on earth, which has tended to push it toward documentary film—as in the work of John Grierson—and away from the commercially oriented products generated south of the border.

Still Here, Still Queer? Rethinking Queer Canadian Cinemas/Canadian Cinemas Queered

This chapter pushes for a broad revision of Canadian national cinemas, arguing for queerness as their privileged mode of expression. The prominence of queerness in the Canadian cinematic imaginary is explored throughout four sections that demonstrate the uniqueness of Canadian cinemas over examples of queer cinema elsewhere. First, the roots of queer cinema/cinema queered in Canada are located in the work of pre-Stonewall pioneers such as Claude Jutra, Norman McLaren, and David Secter. Second, queerness is seen informing the institutional and political structures of Canadian cinema through practices of activism around identities, intersectionality, and serostatus. Third, queerness is recentered in the oeuvre of the nonqueer auteurs Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, and Denys Arcand, as a synonym for sexual fluidity and a symptom of sexual/national anxiety. Finally, the contributions of Léa Pool, John Greyson, Thirza Cuthand, and Xavier Dolan uncover the intersectional heritage and souls of contemporary queer Canadian cinemas.

Bazoocam 4′33″

Bazoocam (and other forms of Chat Roulette) are unlikely venues for activism—and even unlikelier forums for collective performances of John Cage's 4′33″, in silent musical protest against Israel's raid on Gaza in November 2011. John Greyson is a Toronto film/video artist whose shorts, features, and installations include Fig Trees, Proteus, The Law of Enclosures, Lilies, Un©ut, Zero Patience, The Making of Monsters, and Urinal. An Associate Professor in Film Production at York University, he was awarded the Toronto Arts Award for Film/Video in 2000 and the Bell Canada Video Art Award in 2007.

Le cadavre à l’intersection du théâtre et du cinéma dans Lilies et Being at home with Claude

Le cadavre offre une analogie évocatrice des rapports entre la scène et l’écran. En effet, le cadavre incarne à la fois la nature imaginaire du cinéma et le caractère paradoxal du jeu théâtral. L’auteur analyse deux adaptations cinématographiques de pièces québécoises, Lilies (1996) de John Greyson et Being at home with Claude (1992) de Jean Beaudin, dans lesquelles le cadavre personnifie la convergence du théâtre et du cinéma. L’article étudie les choix qu’ont fait les cinéastes pour représenter le corps mort ou mourant et souligne comment ces choix démontrent l’aptitude de ces cinéastes à porter un regard perspicace sur le processus de traduction médiatique, et ce, tout en réussissant à communiquer les thèmes principaux des oeuvres originales.