Portraits by Kika Nicolela
Friday June 2, 7:30 Doors/8 Screening
$8/$5 members + students
@ CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue
A maestro of startling documentary reinvention, Brazilian artist Kika Nicolela, part-time community saviour and veteran of internationalist fringe movie showcases, returns to Toronto to present three of her most prescient encounters. At each turn she finds a way to bring to light to forgotten faces, to celebrate the lives of trans women and the indomitable Marquise of Santos, a larger-than-life figure who courted controversy and royal privilege. This mini-retrospective includes a bevy of award-winners including Flickering (2009), Tropic of Capricorn (2005) and Biographies (2016).
The artist will be present at the screening.
Flickering 3 minutes 2009
A portrait in two acts, a face and the light that offers this face to strangers, and the darkness that this face returns to.
Tropic of Capricorn 30 minutes 2005
This award-winning short invites four trans women into a hotel room, where they speak of forbidden desires and an underground life of fantasy and work. The holding environment of the room offers a generous space in which to speak, to touch, to confess, as if words could deliver us to truths that pictures only undermine. This movie is filled with a rare and powerful intimacy, and a directness of address that startles and provokes.
Biographies 30 minutes 2016
A sideways biography of Domitila de Castro do Canto e Melo, the Marquise of Santos, a celebrated and controversial figure in 19th century Brazil. In place of the usual documentary trappings her life is staged via five female familiars, who carry the weight, or else offer their stripped off confession to a mirror, or recount a history of scars and relational abuse. An inventive elegy that carries the past into the present day, with unexpected consequences.