Nick White
Directing
Biography
Born in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada, Nick White began making short films in his teenage years before attending York University's film production program. His projects have straddled various different styles including essay films, documentaries, science fiction, and experimental. He continues to work as an editor and sound designer on projects for others while directing his own films.
Known For
Mars Brito, a trans bike courier, is killed by an SUV. Is he the victim of an accidental 'door prize', or is this murder? His case becomes a city-wide obsession, with hourly true crime updates and rewards for clues. While this murder mystery unfolds, a Toronto trans activist (also named Mars) works with his friends on an operatic memorial, creating arias for each of the 375 trans murders that were committed around the world that year. Door Prize weaves together documentary, drama, and opera scenes into a hybrid film that explores issues of media spectacle, solidarity violence, trans visibility, and anti-trans violence.
Door Prize
Outraged by the latest bombing of Gaza, Palestinian queer activists Hamza and Walid recruit queer novelist Jean Genet to help them sabotage the Eurovision song contest in Jericho. Their method? Secure the collaboration of Buddy and Pedro, Toronto's famous gay penguins... The emergence of queer BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) as a dynamic Palestinian-led global movement is brought to vivid life through interviews and actions, opera and agitprop, protests and pranks. Recounting fifteen years of passionate activism in Toronto and worldwide, Photo Booth juxtaposes a surreal operatic narrative with documentary scenes that explore pride and pink-washing, gay soldiers and homo-nationalism, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, and the accelerating weaponization of anti-Semitism.
Photo Booth
In 2021, aspiring chef Phelokazi Ndlwana was stabbed to death because she fought back against her rapist. She was targeted specifically because she was a proud black lesbian, beloved in her home community of Khayelitsha Township, South Africa, and the latest victim in a national epidemic of homophobic violence. Funeka Soldaat and her activist group Free Gender in Khayelitsha took the police to court, alleging incompetence and corruption in Phelokazi's case. Ndodana-Breen and Greyson have crafted an operatic cine-poem inspired by Phelokazi's story, featuring vocals by mezzo-soprano Chantelle Grant.
Mariposa
This experimental opera reenacts the lesser known history of Chinese medical student Li Shiu Tong, and his lover Magnus Hirschfeld, a much older German sexologist and gay rights pioneer during Nazi Germany.
Death Mask
On her first solo voyage into outer space, astronaut Kate and her associates at mission control begin to question her sanity as she hears noises in her head and fears she is being attacked.
The Space Between Us
"Nadia's Songs" follows a teenage boy who finds a collection of CDs that used to belong to a stranger known only as Nadia. In their shared taste in music he imagines her life story while in turn reflecting on his own. One part essay and one part love letter to second hand music shops, "Nadia's Songs" explores the many ways we can forge our identities through the art we consume and things we collect as young adults.
Nadia's Songs
A soft-spoken teenage boy gets a job at the local drive-in theatre to rekindle his relationship with his childhood friend when suspicion surrounding what truly happened at the staff party starts getting in the way.
Now Playing
An examination of the natural textures of the world and their changes over the course of one year.