In a cabin in the forest, Jean and Mana listen to various animal species and catalogue voice recordings. When they hear unfamiliar sounds, their curiosity to uncover a secret is aroused.
Jean lives as a hermit in a forest. From his cabin, he listens to and records the sounds of the animals that inhabit the surrounding area. One night, he hears the cry of an unknown animal. Along with Mana, a young girl who sings with the birds, he goes in search of the mysterious creature.
Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain
Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain
Sue Johnson, Eryn Foster
DOK Film Market Exclusives
Documentary Film
Canada
2023
72 minutes
English
International Premiere open
Synopsis
Celestial Queer is a 72-minute feature documentary celebrating James MacSwain, a beloved queer artist, animator and gay rights activist. Born and raised in the “backwater” of Atlantic Canada, MacSwain has been making ground-breaking experimental films, animations and provocative art performances for more than half a century.
Through a combination of playful verité and rarely-seen footage from his archive, Celestial Queer accompanies MacSwain and a revolving cast of characters as he revisits everything from the sites of some of his most recognised works to the rocky tidal shores of Nova Scotia. The film also includes rarely-seen footage from the famous 1984 rooftop “Phallus Performance” during which MacSwain was almost arrested and charged with obscenity. New work has been made specifically in conjunction with the film, while also including restorations of over a dozen of MacSwain's 16mm films.
Jim's effusive character, prolific work, and community organising have inspired generations of artists to be fearlessly themselves. Celestial Queer now introduces audiences to one of Canada's best-kept secrets – an artist who is effortlessly charming, engagingly prolific, and subversive to his surrealist core.
Frieda, Viola and Jilou are three of the most successful women in the male-dominated breakdance world. At different points in their careers, each of them faces serious challenges.
Who says that women can't break dance? Frieda, Viola and Jilou are three of the most successful women in the male-dominated breaking world. The movie shows their tough training methods, their dance performances at international battles and their personal backgrounds that drive them to fulfil their dreams. The three friends are at different points in their sports careers and thus face new challenges and decisions that will change their lives.
B-girl Jilou is at the height of her career and counts as one of the best in the world. With her extraordinary determination, she is currently winning one battle after the other, whereas Frieda is still grappling with an injury. As a B-girl ever since the emergence of break dancing, she has to come to terms with the fact that her advancing age means she can no longer rely on her body and has to find a life outside of her professional sports career. B-girl Viola is focused on becoming recognised as a dancer and combines breaking with modern dance. For her, every battle is equally a fight for her identity as an artist.
Dancing Heartbeats is an inspiring portrait of courage, endurance, the power of one's passion, and what it means to be a young woman who is fighting for acknowledgement and equal rights.
In 1943, Hitler ordered the destruction of Marseilles' oldest neighbourhood. Today, the last survivours fight to have this tragedy recognised as a crime against humanity.
The film follows the last survivors of this tragedy, as they deliver a last attempt to break the silence around these forgotten Nazi crimes. Through their direct accounts, the film also recounts the terrible days of the round-up, when France's oldest neighbourhood was raised to the ground and the life of hundreds of families, most of them first or second-generation migrants, was destroyed forever.
Esteban, a Swiss entrepreneur, dreams of taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A dream he turns into reality, which results in him competing alongside professional drivers.
Esteban, a Swiss entrepreneur, dreams of taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A dream he turns into reality, which results in him competing alongside professional drivers. Laps follow each other endlessly among the exhilaration of these exceptional vehicles. Full Tank humorously immerses itself in this testosterone-driven microcosm, subtly highlighting the excesses of motorsport.
In this “telephone” road movie, Floriane Devigne (Ni d’Ève, ni d’Adam, VdR 2018; La Clé de la Chambre à Lessive, VdR 2013) takes us on a journey through so-called “peripheral” France. From remote villages to deserted areas, guided by telephone conversations collected from the last public telephone boxes, she casts an amused, critical and cutting gaze over our ever-changing society.
Two best friends are drifting through the city of Montreal. They come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada and share the same heritage, language and longings.
Kathy and Teresa are best friends. Far from their home village, a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada, the two young women share a tender relationship in the city of Montreal.
An intimate conversation between father and daughter about a fermenting family secret amidst experimental image and sound recordings of work on a winery in southwest France.
Within a dialogue through different stages, a woman evokes with her father, a historian and a stranger, events that she didn't live through and that somehow, she seems to have gone through.
The director, a stateless Filipino, returns to his native country. For more than twenty years, he lived without papers in the USA and feels trapped in a world full of borders.
A poetic essay film through the lens of an undocumented immigrant becoming disillusioned by their future in the United States and deciding to return to an estranged homeland. Nowhere Near tracks down the origin of a family curse backtracking through the post 9/11 era, the US occupation of the Philippines and the spiritual conquest of the Spanish empire. The film is a years-long diary towards understanding the causes of migration to the United States, though ultimately this odyssey deviates far from the expected course.
After the coup in Uruguay in 1973, thousands of intellectuals and artists fled the country. My father was among them and left for Europe. After his passing three years ago, I came upon some Super 8 movies and audio recordings he had made. Through this archive, I started building a new family story trying to reveal and understand the silent pain of his exile and the fierce will to be a family despite the estrangement.
Diabetes: Matthew Lancit lives in constant fear of the complications of his disease, so he simply anticipates the body horror himself. The result is equally funny and disturbing.
What started as a nostalgic film diary about his diabetes has been gradually contaminated by Matthew's anticipation of possible futures. Introducing monstrous elements into his family home movies, he re-appropriates tropes from the body horror films of his youth to create an image of the invisible disease.
Invited by a mysterious friend, a film team sets out on a journey into a hidden Yenish Europe that stretches from dusty banlieues in France to the forests of Carinthia. Told by the voices of young and old Travellers, a kaleidoscopic panorama of their lives unfolds: Diverse people relate to each other, bound together by their love of freedom but also by deep wounds from the past. Their otherness is mirrored and reflected not least in the exchange between the filmmakers and the Yenish.
Suzanne, 91 years old, lives alone in the Vosges in a house without water or electricity, where she enjoys the little pleasures of life. A laconic and humorous portrait.
“We'll see!” Suzanne takes life as it comes, with calm and serenity. She lives alone on the farm where she was born in 1930, on the edge of a forest in the Hautes-Vosges. The house is not connected to water or electricity. According to the seasons, Suzanne cultivates her vegetable garden, prepares her preserves, reads the press, walks in the mountains, and welcomes passing visitors. She savours all the little pleasures of life while laughing, having fun and embodying this happy sobriety to which her contemporaries aspire.
Adam’s body becomes a mirror of his soul, making every grievance visible to everyone through strange deformations. A brilliant insight into the mind of a 15-year-old boy.
Adam is a 15-year-old teenager who has the strange peculiarity of having a body that changes, based on the mockery and negative comments he receives from those around him. The accumulation of its physical changes, only adds a layer of complexity to those already present in his life. The summer when Ange, his grandmother, dies, he has to work to develop his autonomy. He maintains the huge house of the family of Kevin Brousseau, a haughty teenager who left on summer vacation. He also has to maintain Mr. Bibeau's lawn, but he can no longer care for himself, because of his heart operation. In addition to his strange body which deforms without end, Adam must learn to juggle summer jobs, his friendship with Timothée, the desire that he feels towards Jeanne, the intimidation he suffers from Glazer's gang, his natural clumsiness, the family complications with his sister Karine, self-discovery and several other facets of teenage life that can be as difficult as they can be beautiful.
Jiri, a Czech physicist and a visionary handyman, has an idea of how to save the planet. But no one will listen to him. His daughter, Marta, a musician and mother of two, is annoyed at this. She takes her camera and goes “out into the world” with her dad. She wants to see if the world could work just as Jiri had envisioned it. Humour is brought to the film as they showcase their combined and inventive strategies on how they should present their idea and to whom. They meet with ecologists, activists, experts, and politicians to get to the World Climate Summit as they attempt to infiltrate public structures and expose the characters behind the powers that decide who can enter where and with what issues. Although those who were addressed agree that Jiri's vision of the world would be the most ideal, after four years of wandering around with his idea of a Uniform Global Carbon Tax and Dividend for all, they find themselves in an anti-everyone situation. Had they come up with the idea much too late? Or too soon?
A strong personal story: Jiri's humour and charisma, Marta's original songs, raw film material, and an inspiring idea to save the planet will make for an unmissable film with the potential for planetary social impact.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.