For more than 30 years, Canada’s Inside Out film festival has been on the cutting edge of LGBTQ cinema. This year I got a chance to check out Inside Out’s Thrive short film slate. Each of the Thrive films is by trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer filmmakers, and deals with their experience. I’ve seen a lot of film festival shorts, and I wanted to make a special note to highlight a few of these.
“Child of Polycritus”
Leading off the Thrive’s collection with “Child of Polycritus” is a… bold choice, to say the least. The short is part two-person show and part history lecture, and the two sit side-by-side unevenly. In it, Maria, the Mother of Jesus, materializes in 2D Joan’s Immaculate Hair, Nail, and Beauty Salon, looking to get her nails done. Thankfully, she has a friendly ear in the shape of 2D Joan, a gossipy old beauty tech who exists outside time and space. The two talk and work on Maria’s nails, while Joan gossips about her clientele, gender-queer people throughout history like Gladys Bentley, Ann Morrow, and Mark Read.
This side of the film has definitely ‘community theatre’ vibes, but not in a bad way. Writer/director Lauren John Joseph occasionally pans to an audience watching what is clearly a stage show, as if reminding us that this is simultaneously art about art and a niche history project. But it doesn’t sit as comfortably next to the other part, where a giant CGI baby face, an intersex person from mythology named the child of Polycritus, gives a more straight-forward history lecture that grounds 2D Joan’s more gossipy takes on queer bodies throughout time.
And yet, I can’t imagine the short without the weird fucking baby head. There’s a tension here, between the sort of informal storytelling that kept queer history alive when mainstream publications erased it and the more typical, academic style of history. That tension is important, though I think it could be integrated better. Still, “Child of Polycritus” intrigued me, even if it didn’t entirely work for me.
“Bros Before”
First off, full disclosure: Writer/director Henry Hanson is the one who invited me to check out the Thrive shorts and sent me a voucher to watch them online. I want to say that up front, because I also want to say: I loved “Bros Before.”
In “Bros Before,” we follow Billy (Radcliffe Adler) and Elijah (Marten Katze), a pair of burnout transmen best friends. We meet them laying in bed together watching a ridiculous reality show called, I believe, “Monogamy Island.” As they start to get turned on by all the beautiful ladies, they tentatively and goofily maneuver themselves into a situation where they’re both masturbating together — but only to women — into a full-blown game of gay chicken that ends with the two hooking up. However, their idyllic relationship is disrupted when Billy begins dating Grace (Meadow Meyer), a semi-malevolent girlboss.
“Bros Before” shouldn’t work, but it does. Chalk it up to the anarchic visual sensibility and loose narrative, reminiscent of Vera Chytilová’s iconic Daisies. Or maybe it works because of the performances, particularly Radcliffe Adler’s loopy himbo energy that wouldn’t be out of place in Wayne’s World. Maybe it’s Hanson’s writing, which fills the short with odd, punchy moments and quotable lines.
Whatever it is, though, Hanson’s short is a delightful ode to the changing landscape of friendship and desire in a gender-bending world.
“The Neighbour”
Turkish filmmaker Cedoy’s “The Neighbour” is probably Thrive’s most conventional short. Bulut moves in to a flat in Istanbul with Füsun, a recently-divorced woman. Unfortunately, Füsun was unaware that he was trans when the lease was signed. She horrified when she finally meets her tenant and believes him to be some kind of radical. The beats from there are easy to see: Füsun and Bulut do not get along, thanks to Füsun’s prejudice, until a moment of crisis forces Füsun to confront who really has her back.
Thankfully, the cast is delightful. I wish I could highlight them by name, as this short, sweet story works almost entirely because of a series of nuanced performances. Unfortunately, the short film doesn’t appear to have an imdb listing, and Inside Out doesn’t list the actors, only the director. I’ll update this singling out the excellent performances when I find the information! Until then: Sincere apologies to the people who did phenomenal, subtle work here.
“Ele of the Dark”
In the wrong hands, “Ele of the Dark” would be insufferable. The short, which is mostly composed of a series of disorienting images, layered and montaged, paired with distorted and out-of-context audio, looks like a particularly pretentious student film. But as I watched, “Ele of the Dark” came together beautifully. Writer/director Yace Sula has incredible confidence in the way they manipulate the imagery of the film.
Ultimately, the short feels like a reflection of Ele’s emotional state after learning that someone (an ex?) has pictures of them they may not want out, and wants to hurt Ele with them. Thus, the imagery: Sensual in theory, but alienating in execution. As with many nude photos, the film is a collage of individual body parts, cut off from the whole. And yet, the images are rarely nude; instead, they are often strongly gendered. Perhaps that is what is causing the alienation and isolation?
Beyond that, there are the frequent reminders of the film being actively watched by someone else. Or perhaps by Ele themself? The images aren’t just chaos, after all, but different kinds of darkness as portrayed by film: Blackness, red light, night vision, each a way of seeing the darkness, but each also only capture pieces of the full experience. Like the body itself, broken down into discrete parts.
An excellent, disorienting short that gave me plenty to chew on.
“Transubstantiation, Shabbat”
The shortest film in the Thrive collection, “Transubstantiation, Shabbat” is a stop-motion animation film about gender, food, and Judaism. The show finds its nameless lead chopping off pieces of themself to make into challah loaf. The animation is memorably grim, but I’ll be honest: I’m not familiar enough with Jewish culture to fully understand the significance of the meal they cook here, or its relationship to gender and sexuality. Elio Baseman’s short is intriguing in its simplicity, but didn’t totally land for me.
“Little Sky”
Jess X. Snow’s “Little Sky” is, like “The Neighbour,” more on the traditional side. Here we follow Sky (Wo Chan), a drag star, dealing with painful memories about not being manly enough for their father as they return to their home town. There, they meet Miyo (Kyoko Takenaka), a younger queer kid dealing with their own insecurities and issues. Sky offers Miyo advice. In return, Miyo helps Sky find themself again after a chance encounter forces Sky to realize that their childhood family is gone.
And, like “The Neighbour,” “Little Sky” is buoyed by excellent performances, particularly by Chan and Takenaka. I also found the film’s reminder about the power of having a community vital. Sky doesn’t make up with their father; instead, Sky and Miyo find their love and confidence in the queer community they built themselves. Reactionary movements are so often geared towards destroying those communities, making them unsafe or toxic. “Little Sky” is a touching illustration of why they are so vital to so many young queer folks.
“How Not to Date While Trans”
If “The Neighbour” feels like the Thrive short most reminiscent of a classical queer story, “How Not to Date While Trans” feels like Thrive’s most Hollywood product. Writer/director/star Nyala Moon has crafted a short, sweet, genuinely funny romantic comedy, and every beat of this thing is note perfect. Here, Andie (Nyala Moon) walks us through how she dates: First date to get a feel for people, second date to start bringing politics, and, if anyone makes it to round three, a confession that she’s trans before they hook up.
Part of the charm of “How Not to Date While Trans” is Moon’s gift for mixing genuinely dark subject matter with a quick witticism and lovely editing. It’s staggering that reactionaries think trans people don’t have a sense of humor or can’t be the subject of jokes. Here, Moon manages to get laughs out of trans panic killings, woke posturing, and passing discourse. Nyala Moon has flawless comic timing and incredible insight, and this short lets her play that to the hilt. Hollywood: Give Nyala Moon a big budget and let the woman work.
Inside Out Film Festival
I have never been to the Inside Out Film Festival. Unfortunately, I only got to see the shorts listed above, a series highlighting trans and nonbinary voices. I mentioned some time ago, in my piece on Angela Robinson’s iconic DEBS, that my own gender identity was somewhat in flux. It still is, likely always will be, but nonbinary is almost certainly closest to my own feelings and experiences. Do I want to be a girl? Sometimes! Do I want to be a guy? Eh… it’s alright. Mostly I want to exist somewhere outside that spectrum.
This isn’t necessarily an experience I see a lot of in media. Gender as a binary is omnipresent. It is part of the air we breathe, in so many ways. And yet, it is functionally invisible to modern mainstream entertainment.
It’s not invisible here. These shorts challenged and engaged with the way I looked at gender. More importantly, however, they were also just… good as hell. I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed “Bros Before” or “How Not to Date While Trans” in particular.