Category Archive: Festivals
Moving to Toronto from a small town at the age of nineteen was the first time I was entirely introduced to the queer scene. More specifically an open and proud community that I would have never really been exposed to three years ago; it’s not that it didn’t exist where I lived either, it just had to be sought out. I remember going to my first gay bar and seeing my first drag show, I was in complete awe. Such an important part of LGBTQIA2S+ history and its community is the drag scene, and the queens who started the revolution at a time where it could have easily resulted in death. So when I sat down to watch Philip J. Connell’s Jump, Darling I already had an instilled excitement knowing that a drag queen character was leading this film. It’s due time for these types of queer stories to be told as a sort of coming of age and I have to say, this one is an incredible installment.
The next and last volume of my round-ups for Fantasia! This was supposed to come out sooner, but to be honest, I felt a bit burnt out, but I’m trying to get back to my productive self. No other way to do so, but force it out, right?
Nostalgia is something that we can all relate too, especially in today’s world where everything seems to be going into shambles. The Way I See It banks on this idea of nostalgia. Following Pete Souza and revisiting his eight years as the photographer for President Obama and his response following President Trump’s election and today’s world. Composing itself mostly of images and stock footage intertwined with interviews, The Way I See It tries to make you yearn for past times and fear our future with the current President of the United States at its head.
Going into this, I was not expecting it to be one of the most chaotic and stressful films to have come my way this year. The sheer messiness of this film was almost too much at times, and I say this as someone who absolutely loved every second of it.
For Emma Seligman’s (Shiva Baby, Void) feature directorial debut, we follow Danielle; a young student who runs into her sugar daddy at a Jewish funeral service with her parents. The chaos that radiates from that short description alone is nothing compared to the events thrown our way throughout the experience.
I got to talk to the director of one of my favourite films coming out of Fantasia, Clapboard Jungle. A great inspiring documentary about the hardships of making a film. You can read my review here. And read our conversation now!
Maybe it says something to me that it felt like I very much needed a film that felt as brutal as this one (and that’s a discussion I should probably have with a therapist or something). But this was a film that I felt like I needed.
The UnderSCENE 