2022 Film Program

Boylesque is a portrait of a young soul hidden in a mature body. Andrzej aka Lulla La Polaca is the oldest Polish drag queen. We meet him when he is preparing his extravagant burial – his ashes are to be buried in an elegant urn in the shape of a stiletto shoe. Although the passing of time makes him nostalgic and miss his dead friend, he does not intend to give up his life show yet. Somewhat forgotten until now, he starts to shine his light on equality parades, private parties and nightclub scenes. Believing that he can still experience romantic love at the end of his life, Andrzej opens himself up to search for someone through a dating site.

An Austrian woman escapes from the pressure of running her family’s vineyard by playing ice hockey. Then a new player arrives to challenge her rigid worldview, leading to a life-changing night on the streets of Vienna.

After discovering case files from a 1950s gender clinic, a cast of trans actors turn a talk show inside out to confront the legacy of a young trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access.

Hysteria or Ugly Part 2 is a performance, vilm, and installation that continues Raja Feather Kelly’s study of pop culture and its displacement of Queer Black subjectivity.

Gordon is a Scottish comic book artist with a big bushy beard, very expressive eyebrows – oh, and an inoperable, incurable brain tumour. By making autobiographical comics about his experience, he is able to communicate his thoughts and reactions to cancer in a medium and a language that is disarming, accessible, and inviting.

Mama Bears is an intimate exploration of two “mama bears,” conservative, Christian mothers who have become fierce advocates for LGBTQ+ people.

Raphi is young, androgynous, and naive. In Barcelona, she begins a gender transition as well as an arduous journey to find her true identity. Co-written by and starring Raphaëlle Pérez, this is the narrative follow-up to director Adrián Silvestre’s ground-breaking hybrid doc Sediments, featuring many of the same trans performers and artists.

Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective.

Peter is a flamboyant, misanthropic dwarf hiding from the world in his shabby New York City apartment. But an unexpected visit from his upbeat—and possibly unhinged—neighbor Winona forces him out of his shell and onto an impromptu road trip. Their destination? What she believes to be the site of an upcoming alien visitation in the wilderness of rural Canada

Park View explores a case that has been shrouded in mystery, revealing the life of one woman, and the religious, legal, and media responses to the aftermath of her death. Park View will lead the viewer on a journey of understanding, from a horrific murder in a coastal Southern town, to the validation of our common humanity.

In this colorful trip back in time, activist, artist, filmmaker, and entertainer Pat Rocco shares his incredible career spanning decades, encompassing nude male erotic films and documentaries that bore witness to crucial moments in queer history, including the first same-sex kiss on the big screen.

With influences ranging from John Waters to Kenneth Anger, director Amanda Kramer (Ladyworld) brings a bold vision to this almost-musical. Its hypnotic score, impressionistic, neon-lit sets, and carefully choreographed sequences evoke West Side Story. A pastiche of queer sensibilities, Hollywood genres, and feminist theory, Please Baby Please is the sort of rich, cinematic experience that you have to see to fully appreciate.

Wil (Michelle Krusiec) is a lesbian, but she not dare tell her widowed mother, Hwei-lan (Joan Chen), or her very traditional grandparents.

A curated collection of short films, programmed by the 2022 Damn These Heels programming committee

In the daytime, Vicky goes fishing out on the sea, in the evening she runs a little bar on the blustery beach of her small village in Ecuador. The silences, emptiness. and meager catches all feed into the sense of unfulfilled longing that pervades her life, but The Beach of Enchaquirados also glows with an irresistible and liberating warmth.

A celebration of the art and the actors of Cabaret Travesía Travesti, which had its last performance as the 2019 Chilean uprising began. Amnesia, filmmaker and last remaining artist in the company, embarks on a cinematic journey providing an unfiltered look at Chile’s drag scene, without shying away from the ugly underbelly of artistic falling out in a tightly knit marginalized community.

In a rural east-coast trailer park, Link lives with his toxic father and younger half-brother Travis. When Link discovers his Mi’kmaw mother could still be alive, it lights a flame and they make a run for a better life.

This workshop teaches the methodology Honest Reactions To Imaginary Situations. It is an approach to creating and performing that above all relies upon; centers and fights for truth.