|
Autopsy:
The Mystery of Troubled Bodies Forget
body beautiful. Think traumatized, beaten, abused, dead and resurrected.
Through voyeuristic footage, personal memory, and post-mortem inspection,
the physicality of queerness is explored and exploited. By redesigning
and appropriating the medical, social, cultural and psychological
‘tools’ that have examined queer minds and bodies, these directors
conduct their own investigations and provide personal testimonies
on queer life. These works challenge and push their mediums, subject
matter and audiences to explore the inner workings of our collective
queer (un/sub)consciousness. Ode to Dorothy (Dayna Macleod, 1998, Canada, video, color, sound, 8 min.) Iconographic Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz) experiences a nervous breakdown and confronts her destructive relationship with the Wicked Witch of the West (her girlfriend) and the Scarecrow. _X_ (prologue) • • (laura jeanne lefave, Canada, 1999, video, b&w and color, sound, French and English, 4 min.) Lefave reworks the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho in search of the absent female body. Die Dyer • (Alain Pelletier, Canada, 1999, video, b&w and color, sound, French and English, 23 min.) Integrating theater and dance with video, Pelletier creates a visually mesmerizing and Deleuzional exploration of surveillance. A Gun Makes An Awful Mess • (Michael Achtman, Canada, 1998, video, color, sound, 7 min.) Guilty confession or revenge fantasy? A patient’s volatile relationship with his psychiatrist explodes. Quiver (Scott Beveridge, Canada, 1999, video, b&w, sound, 5 min.) A man’s memory floods with a mirage of sexual violence in the age of AIDS, love, regret and exoneration. Mathi • (B. Lenin, India, 1999, 35mm, sound, in English with local dialects, 10 min.) From the post-mortem table, a transsexual narrates his life experiences while scrutinizing Indian Society’s rigidity. Hoolboom • (Wrik Mead, Canada, 1999, video, sound, 4 min.) Featuring filmmaker Mike Hoolboom (Positiv, MIX 1998) as its subject and object, this video exposes bodies as the origin of (r)evolution.
|
