Ileana Pietrobruno

A young Canadian poet with Chinese and Persian parents travels to Iran to perform at a poetry festival.

A super low-budget, drag king, pirate movie shot on miniDV. Pirates capture a naïve Butch and promise him that if he can find the Queen’s stolen treasure, they will be give him his heart’s desire—the seductive femme Claudia. Soon Butch is sailing on treacherous seas, swept away by dangerous desires where tops are bottomed, pirate captains are seduced by tranny sailors and cross-dressing femmes pack a wallop. With the help of the mysterious Easy and the infamous pirate Captain Candy, can Butch find the treasure in time to restore the natural attraction between butch and femme? Decidedly tongue-in-cheek, this clever tale uses a pastiche of pillaged imagery to lead us into the uncharted oceans of dyke desire. A sweetly perverse fable for drag kings, gender-benders and those who adore them. Music by Amon Tobin

In a world of fixed positions and prescribed roles, expanding the definition of gender requires the courage to dive deep into understanding and acceptance. Written and directed by Christina Willings, Beauty explores the lives of five gender-creative kids, each uniquely engaged in shaping their ideas of what it means to be fully human. Claiming your own sense of gender when everything around you insists that you comply and conform can be challenging, and sometimes scary—but family and friends are there to help. Free-flowing animated elements, ranging from images of octopuses to astronauts, draw together the kids’ shared experiences in beautifully rendered fantasias that celebrate the power of imagination and the flourishing force of self-determination. Playful, goofy, loving and brave, each of these remarkable young people—including Ladner, B.C.’s transgender advocate Tru Wilson—have found their own way to break free and show the world what it really means to be your true self.

An enigmatic Japanese woman, abandoned by her wealthy Chinese husband in a remote Pacific Northwest village, becomes entwined in the lives of two rugged locals.

"The director of the underground feature 'Cat Swallows Parakeet And Speaks!' turns their eye for stunning metaphoric imagery to the myth of Narcissus." -Out On Screen Festival

This personal documentary is the story of Teresa Marshall, who grew up on a British Columbia ranch. Every child needs a demon, and Teresa took battle against rattlesnakes. In the dry interior of B.C., the south Okanagan and Similkameen valleys form the bio-region known as Canada's "pocket desert." As settlers' dreams of creating an agricultural Eden erase fragile desert lands that support a breathtaking array of wild species, the narrator and her snake-hunting neighbours are forced to examine their environmental attitudes.

In this animated short, a young girl and her father move from China to Canada, bringing only their Chinese violin along for the journey. As they face the challenge of starting fresh in a new place, the music of the violin connects them to the life they left behind and guides the girl towards a musical future.

A lesbian couple contemplating marriage and a family with a gay teen son taking in an unexpected visitor from the past find their lives not so far apart.

This animated short looks at the building of Canada's transcontinental railroad with wit and whimsy. Engine 371 illustrates the struggle humans have with nature and how this fundamental tension united a country.

captive animals, captive people

A man obsessed with prostitutes discovers that love is a lot more expensive than sex. A peek into the world of prostitution from the client's point of view.

Documentary about the Holy Angels Residential School in Alberta, where hundreds of First Nations children were imprisoned.

Ileana Pietrobruno's triumph of mid-vaginal modernism masterfully confronts the surreal nature of societal attitudes towards the female body. Beautifully shot at Riverview Hospital (formerly an insane asylum), the film follows the journey of Scheherazade, a young model attempting to insulate herself from paternalistic and sinister medicalization throught the re-telling of tabloid tales. Replete with lesbians, anorexics, necrophillic undertones and a deluge of menstrual blood, Pietrobruno's febrile fable contains enough raw passion to ignite the sensibilities of even the most faded feminists.

A riff on Mizoguchi's 1936 classic. Penny and Jade are university students. Jade never goes to class because she prefers cruising with her heavy-metal boyfriend. Penny regularly attends French class because she is ambitious to become a European snob. She also has her eyes on the professor's antiques and jewels. While Penny is an opportunist who only appreciates men for their money, Jade is too stupid to know the value of money. In the end, both girls lose out.

A loose retelling of the play 'Ivona, Princess of Burgundia' (1938) by Witold Gombrowicz.