The Floating Man dir. Michael V. Smith/Canada/1:17:32/2023
As anti-trans and drag queen rhetoric rages in gender wars across the globe, Michael V. Smith’s intimate documentary unpacks his journey as a radical drag performer and genderqueer.
Inspired by Agnès Varda, The Floating Man is a unique blend of DIY documentary, road trip, performance art, and videopoem. In this intimate self-portrait by a self-described sissy, The Floating Man sources Smith’s provocative art practice, to examine a lifetime of untrue stories about his body.
A featured project includes Smith on a road trip on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, searching for famed Canadian singer Joni Mitchell… while dressed as Peanut the Clown.
A contemporary thread sees Smith’s body ‘erased,’ dressed in a black bodysuit, in an attempt to eliminate all gender signals, asking us, How do we read a body? What does a particular shape tell us about the world? How much do we not realize we assume, often wrongly, about a person we see on the street? How might we assume less? The Floating Man is an uplifting and timely film about gender fluidity and the power of art to transform a life.
Filmmaker Michael V. Smith in attendance
Preceded by the short film
Meet the Creatures- dir. Veronica Dymond/Canada/4:00/2023
A mother isn’t sure she can accept her daughter’s new paramour in this home-brew animated sci-fi short.
Michael V. Smith has won a number of awards for both his short film work and his writing. His short I Dream a Queer Allegory, made with celebrated writer RM Vaughan before his death, won the Cadence Best Video by Poets Award in 2021.
As a performer, Smith has played dozens of cabarets and festivals, including Toronto’s VideoFag, nGbK gallery in Berlin, Junge Triebe Festival in Bielefeld, Germany, the 2011 Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, the Entzaubert Festival in Berlin, Encuentro 2014 in Montreal, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and an intervention with the Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin.
Smith’s novel, Cumberland (Cormorant Books, 2002), was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Smith has won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers and a Western Magazine Award for Fiction. His memoir, My Body Is Yours (Arsenal Pulp, 2015) was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.
Michael V. Smith is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC, where he teaches Creative Writing in the interdisciplinary department of Creative Studies.
The Floating Man dir. Michael V. Smith/Canada/1:17:32/2023
As anti-trans and drag queen rhetoric rages in gender wars across the globe, Michael V. Smith’s intimate documentary unpacks his journey as a radical drag performer and genderqueer.
Inspired by Agnès Varda, The Floating Man is a unique blend of DIY documentary, road trip, performance art, and videopoem. In this intimate self-portrait by a self-described sissy, The Floating Man sources Smith’s provocative art practice, to examine a lifetime of untrue stories about his body.
A featured project includes Smith on a road trip on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, searching for famed Canadian singer Joni Mitchell… while dressed as Peanut the Clown.
A contemporary thread sees Smith’s body ‘erased,’ dressed in a black bodysuit, in an attempt to eliminate all gender signals, asking us, How do we read a body? What does a particular shape tell us about the world? How much do we not realize we assume, often wrongly, about a person we see on the street? How might we assume less? The Floating Man is an uplifting and timely film about gender fluidity and the power of art to transform a life.
Filmmaker Michael V. Smith in attendance
Preceded by the short film
A mother isn’t sure she can accept her daughter’s new paramour in this home-brew animated sci-fi short.
Michael V. Smith has won a number of awards for both his short film work and his writing. His short I Dream a Queer Allegory, made with celebrated writer RM Vaughan before his death, won the Cadence Best Video by Poets Award in 2021.
As a performer, Smith has played dozens of cabarets and festivals, including Toronto’s VideoFag, nGbK gallery in Berlin, Junge Triebe Festival in Bielefeld, Germany, the 2011 Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, the Entzaubert Festival in Berlin, Encuentro 2014 in Montreal, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and an intervention with the Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin.
Smith’s novel, Cumberland (Cormorant Books, 2002), was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Smith has won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers and a Western Magazine Award for Fiction. His memoir, My Body Is Yours (Arsenal Pulp, 2015) was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.
Michael V. Smith is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC, where he teaches Creative Writing in the interdisciplinary department of Creative Studies.
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Details
Venue
Kingston, Ontario K7L 5M6 Canada + Google Map