In three easy lessons, you’ll learn many Cantonese phrases that are useful in a gay bar, a cruising park, and a bathhouse. These three self-contained episodes can be viewed as a single video or as a recurring serial in a program of shorts.
Miss Chinatown juxtaposes the views of eight subjects against the background image of a beauty pageant: the Miss Chinese-Vancouver 1996. The subjects are all full or part ethnic Chinese, together they represent a diverse face of the Chinese-Canadian community, they present different perspectives on identity, home, sex and race. The contestants are seen going through the paces in the cheong-san (traditional side slit dress) segment of the live television spectacle.
Ooooo Canada is a 30-minute edited version presenting highlights from the five-hour live webcast on February 13,2010. Ooooo Canada was the first in a series of five site-specific projects presented during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter games in Vancouver. The broadcast was co-hosted by Skeena Reece and Paul Wong. It is an alternative critique of corporate, mass, pop and nationalist culture in the 21st century. Reece and Wong provide illuminating, personal, political, aboriginal, and comedic perspectives.
A bunch of Vancouver dykes take hand held hi8 to new heights. In this improvisational short, which offers a wake up call to political complacency. Short on plot, big on subtext. Amidst comic moments these intrepid lesbians go searching for political dykes. What else can you do when the lesbian centre becomes a tattooparlour?
Nea is in danger of losing her daughter: First Nations, single and poor, she places no trust in a legal system that has taken thousands of First Nations children away from their families. Morgan's erotic photographs have been seized by the cops: as a lesbian involved in the anti-censorship struggle, she is starting to feel a bit jaded. A mutual friend, Helena, introduces Nea to Morgan and their lives collide. Layered with special effects and poetic writing, this video-drama documents a historical moment in feminist and anti-racist organizing in Canada.
Water into Fire is a mix of documentation of his performative piece and other scenes. In this piece, the artist continues his search seen in his earlier works for identity and placement in Canada's multicultural and First Nations arena. Longboy outs himself as a First Nations FAG, who is living with HIV and abruptly severs attached preconceptions of two-spirited peoples, forcing the First Nation's community to address him rather than the disease. In a contemplative and meditative search, Longboy recollects how HIV/AIDS has affected him and the community around him, revealing a strength through loss.
This collaborative video shot at a glacial lake in the Rocky Mountains, features a dialogue between two women friends who explore their relationship to the natural environment as influenced by their different cultural backgrounds. Through the layering of meditative images of canoeing, this video evokes a subtle examination of race, gender and privilege: how do we enter into this landscape, as residents, immigrants, tourists, and adventurers?
Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.
So Are You is a 25 minute videotape about the difficulties of assuming ones self-identity. Identity is shaped and informed by the dominant culture, often producing stereotypes that are reinforced by the media. Through such structures racist behaviour is learned and condoned. So Are You uses unconventional structures and casting to criticize stereotypes. The eighteen cast members include Natives, Asians, Blacks and Whites. Paul Wong continues to explore the idea of self-identity by investigating gender boundaries through the inclusion of a set of identical male twins and two female impersonators who portray twins and two female impersonators who portray twins in the cast. The video uses recognizable television and cinematic framing devices to highlight the idea of the construction and dissemination of stereotypes through the broadcast news, cinema verite, interviews, etc. Comprised of short scenes, So Are You is faced paced and entertaining.
Bare uses the documentary form to explore an unconventional subject matter-women who shave their heads. Three women talk about various personal experiences, touching on issues of identity and retaliation over the stereotyping of women of color, and how they use shaving as a personal, political action to achieve empowerment.
