Artists

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Orene Askew

DJ

Opening Night Party

Orene Askew, aka DJ O Show brings energy and expertise to every event she DJ’s and hosts. Making sure folks never want to leave the dance floor. Coming from a diverse background, O Show is driven by her passion. She is Afro-Indigenous and a proud member of the Squamish Nation!

Sasha Argirov

Director

Personals

Sasha Argirov is a Canadian filmmaker based in Vancouver. He is a recipient of the Sundance Ignite 2020 grant. His short film, Personals, had its world premiere at the In The Palace Festival in Bulgaria. His first feature film is currently in development.

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Allen Baylosis

Panelist

Metamorphosis

Allen Baylosis (he/him) is an emerging dramaturg, and a critical, racial, and ethnic performance scholar. His research explores the intersections of minoritarian performances, migration, racial capitalism, and transpacific worldmaking. He is a graduate student at UBC’s Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice program. He holds an MA in Performance Studies (NYU) and a BA in Speech Communication (UP Diliman).

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Davey Calderon

Panelist

Metamorphosis

Davey Samuel Calderon (he/they) is a theatre director, curator, writer, producer, drag artist, dramaturg, and settler on the unceded lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-speaking peoples. He co-founded the emerging theatre collective New(to)Town Collective. His works, including Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night!, explore the intersectionality of Filipinx and queer identity.

John Paul (JP) Catungal

Panelist

Metamorpohsis

JP Catungal (he/him) is Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute and Academic Co-Lead of the Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement at UBC. His research, and teaching concern community organizing and cultural production among migrant, racialized, and LGBTQ+ communities, and is informed by his own experiences as a queer, first generation Filipinx migrant.

Mahlet Cuff

Guest Curator

Obsidian: Black Queer Cinema: AS I AM

Mahlet Cuff is an emerging curator, writer and artist. She is based in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg, Manitoba). Their curatorial practices focuses on satirical humour as resistance, the reimagining of Black queer diasporic futures, and archival practices. She has curated work for Window Winnipeg, Take Home BIPOC arts house, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Winnipeg Film Group, and VTape.

Maiden China

Performer

Opening Night Party

Maiden China is a second generation Chinese, trans-femme, non-binary artist living on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her drag explores themes of vulnerability, queer ritual, the concept of the “hyphen”, and liminal experience by incorporating elements of classical Chinese opera, glamour, punk, and intimate contact performance art.

Performing since 2016 in so-called “Vancouver, BC”, Maiden holds the pageant titles of Mr/Ms Cobalt All Star, and the Dogwood Monarchist Society’s Entertainer of the Year 2018. In 2019 Maiden was the subject and a creative director of an award-winning documentary titled Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny, which has screened in over six countries, including BAFTA qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival in Leeds, UK.

She is a member of the House of Rice, “Canada’s” only all Asian drag family, as well as a member of the Darlings, a non-binary drag performance collective whose self produced “Quarantine” film series garnered international recognition for digital ingenuity during the COVID pandemic lockdown across 2020/2021.

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K.P Dennis

Performer

All Boys Aren't Blue

K.P Dennis a Black, non-binary, theatre artist, director, and poet. They were the 2016 Youth Poet Laureate of Victoria, and their work has been featured at Here! Magazine, National Theatre School and CBC GEM. Their poetry is written for performance, and could be described as a queer, afro-surrealist exploration of self, identity, growth, and healing.

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D Fretter

Performer

All Boys Aren't Blue

D Fretter’s mother likes to say he’s had a way with words since before he learned to talk. D began writing songs at age 17 after stealing his older sister’s guitar. After pursuing music for over a decade, he put down his guitar but held onto his pen and found that some truths sound even more beautiful without a melody. Now as a spoken word artist and poet D has made a name for himself spreading his message of selflove and grounded optimism. Often refered to as a hip-hop Andrea Gibson or a philosophical Shel Silverstein D Fretter shares his work to entertain, encourage, and empower his audience.

May Farrales

Panelist

Metamorphosis

May Farrales (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Geography and Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies at SFU. Her teaching and research are animated by questions of racialization, queer politics, and logics of power fundamental to colonial, empire-building, and capitalist projects. Her current research examines racial geographies of settler colonialism.

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Human Girl

Director, Cast

Painted Gold

Human Girl is a music producer, singer-songwriter, filmmaker, comedienne, and rising drag performer in Vancouver. Her drag persona was found through the writing and making of Painted Gold, her graduation film from Emily Carr. Human Girl is live on Spotify and all music platforms.

Vinay Giridhar

Director

Emergence: Out of Shadows

Vinay Giridhar is an animator, graphic designer, and illustrator. His animated short film Loves Age was an official selection at the HollyShorts Film Festival. Vinay’s work spans art director and graphic design for South Asian Lifestyle Magazine and extensive film and video work. Vinay is originally from Kerala, India and currently lives in Surrey, BC.

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Florian Halbedl

Director

Circle

Born in Luzern, Switzerland, Florian Halbedl Hess immigrated to Canada in 2000 and shot his first short film for a Vertebrate Biology course at Western University. He has written and directed five short films, which have screened at over sixty film festivals internationally: Whispers of Life (2013), Limina (2016), Henry’s Heart (2019), Circle (2021), and most recently 0UTL4W (2022).

Oliv Howe

Cast

The Empress of Vancouver

In 1981, the Vancouver Dogwood Monarchist Society crowned Oliv the 10th Empress. Then, Oliv’s punk rock energy, fender-fucking performances and DIY glam aesthetic spoke to a political and artistic shift in Vancouver’s drag community. Ever since her monumental moment, Oliv has represented the weirdos and freaks, the trans kings and queens and gender queers, busting the binary open. She continues to be a beacon in Vancouver’s West End, inspiring the next generation of queerdos.

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Fanny Kearse

Performer

All Boys Aren't Blue

Fanny Kearse is a Storyteller, Poet, Radical, Mental Health Advocate, Truth Seeker, Elevator of Youth, Slayer of Mountains, The Dream of a Slave. Fanny walked away from nearly a decade as a social worker to pursue lifelong dreams of being a poet and disrupting the system to be more diverse, inclusive and equitable.

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Kriss Li

Curator

Abolition Film Society

Kriss Li is a multimedia artist who creates fictional narratives, animations, documentaries, and installations that explore structures of power and the hidden sites of greater collective capacities. Kriss’s practice is informed by community organizing, especially at Prisoner Correspondence Project, a volunteer-run solidarity initiative for LGBTQ prisoners.

Stéphanie Lamorré

Director

Being Thunder

Stéphanie Lamorré is a French documentary filmmaker and international independent writer/producer/director/cameraperson. She creates films for ARTE TV and CINEMA (France). Shooting solo and often in areas of armed conflict, she covers subjects from modern-day slavery and illegal immigration to social justice issues.

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Dylan Murray

Director

Submersion

Dylan Murray (he/him) is a Vancouver-based director and editor. Dylan graduated from Capilano University with a Bachelor of Motion Picture Arts degree. He is passionate about creating films that highlight LGBTQ2SIA+ narratives, and utilizes the psychological horror genre to explore themes of loss, isolation, and love. He hopes that everyone enjoys his short horror film Submersion.

Reem Morsi

Director

Muslim Mingle

Egyptian-Canadian writer/director/producer Reem Morsi was a professional scuba diver and UN human rights officer. She’s worked on features Bootleg, Hysteria, and The Last Mark; award-winning shorts Show & Tell and The Door & Their Feast; and shows for CBC Gem and other broadcasters. Reem is an alumna of the CFC’s Director’s Lab, TIFF Talents, Women in the Director’s Chair.

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Venus Noirre

Performer

All Boys Aren't Blue

Venus Noirre is a writer whose cultural identity and traumas have led her to share her imperfect words with the world. With no formal writing education, she has published zines, essays and poetry on queer identity, sex work and Blackness. The continuous genocide of Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies in the Americas has forced her re-examine what she shares of herself with her audience. Blackness and autonomy as a Black woman is at the center of her work and she knows that it is essential that she continues telling these stories.

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Kwame Edwin Otu

Panelist

Obsidian: Black Queer Cinema: AS I AM

Kwame Edwin Otu is an Assistant Professor at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also the Guerrant Assistant Professor of Public Health at UVA’s Center for Global Health Equity. Otu’s research includes issues of sexual citizenship, critical human rights studies, revolutionary black aesthetics, and Afrofuturist practice.

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Jonas Pascual

Director

Philia

It is art that connects him to his higher self. Jonas Pascual is a 22-year-old Filipino Vancouver-based filmmaker. As a new kid in the film industry he hopes to show the stories in his mind to the world. Just like being queer, his art cannot be expressed in one way⁠—there are too many ideas, stories, and imagination to manifest.

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Dave Rodden-Shortt

Director

The Empress of Vancouver

Dave Rodden-Shortt is a Vancouver-based queer filmmaker. Dave is the founder of Shortt and Epic Productions (2011) and Lantern Films (2015). His work and creativity has won awards, including the Gerry Brunet Award for Best BC Short Film for Under the Rainbow. His latest short film Happytime Social Club, commissioned by B.C.’s Knowledge Network, premiered at VIFF in 2019.

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Alex Sangha

Producer

Emergence: Out of the Shadows

Alex Sangha is the founder of the Sher Vancouver LGBTQ Friends Society, a non-profit serving LGBTQ South Asians and friends. Alex produced the award-winning short documentary film My Name Was January. Emergence: Out of the Shadows is his debut feature film as a producer. Alex is the recipient of the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada.

Anjalica Solomon

Performer

All Boys Aren't Blue

Anjalica Solomon is a genderfluid bird watcher, tree hugger, astrology boyfriend and expansive lover. A multidisciplinary artist born in Chandigarh India and raised on what is colonially known as “Vancouver, BC” on the stolen and unsurrendered territories of the Coast Salish, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations. They are a  vocalist, songwriter, lyricist, loop pedalist, poet, playwright, actor, organiser and performer. Their music weaves together rap, hip hop, spoken word poetry, traditional Indian instrumentation and old bollywood styles. They aim to make art that forges a path for queer, South Asian futuristism.

Joseph Sackett

Director

Homebody

Joseph Sackett is an award-winning filmmaker who has written, directed, and produced projects that have screened in competition at the Festival de Cannes, Slamdance, and Outfest among others. He received his MFA in Screenwriting and Directing from NYU Tisch Grad Film. He is currently in pre-production on his second feature film Cross Pollination.

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Ayo Tsalithaba

Director

Atmospheric Arrivals

Ayo Tsalithaba is a visual artist originally from Ghana and Lesotho. Their primary mediums include film, photography, and illustration. Their work explores questions of home, (in)visibility, liminality and (un)belonging as they relate to Black queer and trans African diasporic subjectivity.

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Alayna Y

Director

Macaroni Soup

Alayna is a digital artist and animator who specializes in making soup. That is, she throws (the figurative concept of) people, places, and things that make up the world around her into a simmering pot of creations. Much of Alayna’s work takes place on traditional Katzie First Nation land.