Join us as we present the 2021 Toronto Queer Film Festival program “Porn is So Boring” to a global audience at 6:00 p.m. PST on Saturday, March 27th. Part of the 2021 festival edition, this special screening on PinkLabel.TV is one-night only and free to PinkLabel+ members.

“Porn is So Boring” contains 11 films from Canada, USA, Germany, India, Spain and Brazil. Six films in the curation were created as part of a BIPOC erotic filmmaking video workshop held by TQFF during the summer of 2020. Those films are: Paani, Moxa Willngan Tastes Really Good, Cannibal, Lonely in Quarantine, What You Didn’t Steal From Me, and Shark Skin Fine.

What role do pleasure, sensuality, and desire play in times of crisis? How does our relationship to our sexuality change when our contact with others is limited by a global pandemic? This program seeks to explore these questions while also (hopefully) allowing you to let off some steam.

Official Selections

Bodies of Desire (Varsha Panikar & Saad Nawab, 2020, 03:41, India)

Using Varsha Panikar’s poetry series by the same name, as the point of departure, “Bodies of Desire” is a visual poetry film co-directed with Saad Nawab. The film captures four sets of lovers amid who passionately create a portrait of tender intimacy, longing, discovery, desire, embrace and care, and profound companionship. It is a sensual celebration of genderless love and desire.

Varsha Panikar (She/Her) is an up and coming filmmaker, poet, and artist who likes to tell stories by blending poetry, performance, art, moving images, and sound. Driven by an unyielding desire to constantly create, she likes to do a bit of everything: from commercials and independent audio-visual endeavours to delving into the sphere of art, poetry, and performance.

Director’s Guild of America (DGA) student award winner Saad Nawab’s film “Frankenstein’s Light,” a kids fantasy, has played and won awards in over twenty-five film festivals across the Americas, Asia, and Europe. He loves to utilize visual media to explore innocence, loss, and religion against the backdrop of worlds brimmed with science fiction and fantasy.

Paani (Priya “Pree” Rehal, 2020, 05:00, Canada)

Paani (“water” in Punjabi) is a short confessional film about the filmmaker’s complicated relationship with their disabled, brown, queer and trans body. It is their second short film. 

Priya “Pree” Rehal (they/them) is an artist-educator currently based in Tkaronto. They’re a child of immigrant settlers from Punjab. Pree’s work is an ode to their extended youth as a trans and non-binary person, while also painting love letters to their inner child, and affirming their queer, disabled, fat self. Their main medium is watercolour, but Pree also embroiders, creates short films, writes, and performs drag. They have an interdisciplinary arts practice under the name: Sticky Mangos and co-founded the Non-Binary Colour Collective. Pree’s work has been featured in CBC, Xtra magazine, BlogTo and Salty.

Moxa Willngan Tastes Really Good (Vanessa Dion Fletcher, 2020, Canada)

A summer afternoon is filled with kaleidoscopic strawberries, deep breaths, and soft moans. There are no words in this video, there are subtle sounds, rain, dishwasher.

Vanessa Dion Fletcher is a Lenape and Potawatomi neurodiverse Artist. Her family is from Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiitt (displaced from Lenapehoking) and European settlers. She Employs porcupine quills, Wampum belts, and menstrual blood reveals the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally. Reflecting on an indigenous feminist body with a neurodiverse mind Dion Fletcher creates art using composite media, primarily working in performance, textiles, video. 

She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with an MFA in performance and York University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She has exhibited across Canada and the US. 

Cannibal (Augusto Bitter, 2020, 04:06, Canada)

Cannibal is a short love letter to food, land, water, sex, a hot summer, and brown skin. Inspired by Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s poem “The Cannibal’s Canción.”

Augusto Bitter is a performer, writer, producer, and facilitator based in Toronto, born in Venezuela. They’ve been a resident artist at Canadian Stage, Aluna Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, and hub14. They express their creativity through dance, spoken word, pottery, and cooking. Augusto has made two short video-poems, cannibal, and golden girl, with the support of the Toronto Queer Film Festival and Glad Day Lit’s Naked Heart Festival. They are an artist-educator with Soulpepper Theatre, and they facilitate creative-writing workshops with children and youth in under-resourced schools and communities with Story Planet.

Lonely in Quarantine (Beeta, 2020, 03:33, Canada)

In the solitary setting of her bedroom, a woman muses on touch and kink during quarantine times. Equal parts mundane and fantasy, she explores her experience of pandemic-induced isolation in a conversation with the viewer.

Beeta is an artist based in Toronto where she lovingly tends to her houseplants. She received an award at Scarborough Arts’ annual juried exhibition in 2019 for her experimental film “Making an Other of That Which is also Life”, and produced her second film “Lonely in Quarantine” in 2020. Beeta occasionally writes for Kajal magazine. She performs burlesque as her alter ego Kareena Pussy Couture, co-founding Silk Burlesque with Ola Minou to produce queer and Middle Eastern-centered burlesque shows. Beeta is currently working on a comedic screenplay. She frequently fantasizes about a better world.

What You Didn’t Steal From Me (Kitty Rode, 2020, 04:38, Canada)

“What You Didn’t Steal From Me” is a tender snapshot of the director’s struggle with self-acceptance. Through rope bondage, they are rediscovering their sexuality after trauma and finding a home in their fat, disabled, and brown body. 

Kitty Rodé is a queer, agender, monster-femme creating multidisciplinary art in Tkaronto. Their work explores body horror, chronic illness, trauma, BDSM and healing. Special thanks to Devochka, founder of TENSION: School of Self-Suspension Art, and filmmakers Thirza Cuthand and Fallon Simard for facilitating this journey.

Shark Skin Fine (Dev Ramsawakh, 2020, 02:46, Canada)

“Shark Skin Fine” is an experimental, erotic self-portrait that explores the artist’s relationship to trauma and intimacy through an analogy of an underappreciated trait of a shark.

Mari “Dev” Ramsawakh is a disabled, non-binary and multidisciplinary artist and storyteller. Their work focuses on their many intersecting identities and social justice. They have written news articles, essays, and opinion pieces for CBC, HuffPost Canada, Insider, Bitch Media, and other publications. They have produced the podcasts Sick Sad World and Cripresentation, and have acted as editor for Possibilities Podcast and Leaders in Colour Podcast. They have published short fiction in the 2014 Hart House Review and the Toronto 2033 anthology published by Spacing Magazine. They also facilitate workshops on ableism and anti-oppression, write poetry and occasionally model.

DIYSEX (Do It Your Sex) (Maria Lorente, Juno Álvarez, Yaiza de Lamo, Mariona Vázquez, 2019, 23:00, Spain)

A challenging yet spellbinding exploration of the seductive landscape of pornography. A glimpse of a body free of all imperfections, which becomes the perfect tool to achieve perfect satisfaction. A diversion into the world of alternative pornography, where sexuality is a natural part of life in all its complexity. A collage of images and opinions which, through resourceful editing, are combined within often witty contexts that are always apt and innovative. DIYSEX encompasses it all, featuring a protagonist who decides to make a porn film tailored to reflect her desires and fantasies.

Maria Lorente has a degree in History of Art and a Master’s Degree in Theory and Practice of Creative Documentary Making from the University of Barcelona. She is currently studying for another Master’s Degree in TV and Cinema Script Writing at the Blanquerna University. Her production company, Intensidades Films, produces short erotic and pornographic films. She collaborates with directors, Mariona Vázquez, Yaiza de Lamo, and Juno Álvarez.

Mountain Lodge (Jordan Wong, 2020, 07:51, USA)

The candle, the myth, the legend:  Mountain Lodge. Absolutely the horniest film about a candle you will ever see.

A collector of souvenir state spoons, Jordan Wong is a Chinese American experimental animator and nonfiction filmmaker driven by emotional honesty and hands-on processes. His films have screened internationally, including DOK Leipzig, NewFest, Animafest Zagreb, Japan Media Arts Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, where he was awarded the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker for the film “Mom’s Clothes”.

Submerge (Ena Lind, 2020,14:55, Germany)

CN: Depiction of BDSM, hard-core, impact play, flogging, punishment, knife play, blood, breath play, gag, and mummification

Outside it was a hot summer afternoon. Inside the factory, the two lovers were washed in cool blue light. One asks the questions, sharp but always with deep connection; the other answers when she can. Submerge is one of the million chapters of a queer BDSM love story.

Ena Lind has been creating different kinds of work around sexuality, art, and education for the last two decades. They have been interested in the dynamics between humans for as long as they can think. Submerge is their film directing debut. Currently, Ena is working on a second film while studying to become a sex and couples therapist. They live in Berlin with their two kids.

Bestiary (Benedito Ferreira, 2020, 05:00, Brazil)

“Beastiary” offers the ultimate performance of adorned booty shaking. Sexy, hilarious, and mezmerizing, this short is not to be missed.

Benedito Ferreira lives and works between Goiânia and Rio de Janeiro. Ph.D. student in Arts at the State University of Rio de Janeiro with research focusing on his artistic processes, montages and narratives. Works with film, objects, installation and photography, without establishing a hierarchy between media. He is currently developing the Despertáculo project, whose boundary between document and fiction is blurred by using as a premise letters he writes for the poet Pio Vargas and photographer Samuel Costa, Brazilian artists who had an early death.

The Toronto Queer Film Festival is a collectively-run, artist-centered, not-for-profit festival that showcases contemporary, innovative, queer and trans film and video art. Our foremost goal as an organization is community building: creating space for queer and trans filmmakers and audiences to come together in the spirit of art and activism. For more information or to purchase the full festival pass, see torontoqueerfilmfest.com.

Watch as a Member

The virtual event is free to to members of PinkLabel+.  On March 27th at 6:00pm (Pacific) you’ll find the program streaming live here. See you at the screening!