Exposures holds second annual trans film festival
The Montreal trans film collective offers a sense of community during uncertain times
The Union Française de Montréal is an unassuming setting for a festival. As you step up to a humble brownstone buried next to a small garden, you may think you’ve gone to the wrong address.
Inside, however, the second annual Exposures Trans Film Festival brought the building to life between Sept. 17 and Sept. 21. The event showcased trans art across genres with screenings, workshops, panels and social events. The festival featured an artisan market, karaoke night and even Sunday morning cartoons with cereal.
You’d see a variety of styles as you pass through the detailed archways and worn floors of the old building. Attendees arrived in flowery knee-length skirts, chunky shoes, piercings, shaved haircuts, and bandanas on both heads and necks. Others simply wore jeans and T-shirts.
All came to gather and unite around one thing: trans culture as it exists.
This year’s theme, “Beyond Visibility: A Space of Our Own,” captured an environment inspired by last year’s response to the event, according to organizer Iris Pint.
“The sense of community surprised us,” Pint said. “People told me, ‘Wow, this is the most trans people I’ve ever seen in one space,’ and we realized how magical it feels to be able to have a space where being trans is not weird or different. [...] It’s kind of the norm.”
“Collective Resistance,” a documentary short on Afro-Indigenous queer solidarity, played halfway through the Friday night bloc.
Writer and educator Shanese Indoowaaboo Steele left the audience with the message, “You have a right to be happy.” As smiles and laughs abounded from Exposures, it seemed as though the Montreal trans community had given themselves a place to accept that.
Trans and nonbinary artists directed all the films screened at Exposures, but the stories did not just focus on starting transition or coming out. Genres ranged from earnest tales of coming home post-transition, awkward comedies, drag music videos, a solar eclipse poem, and even a Greek myth retold through surrealist dance.
Sunday’s closing bloc, “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” featured films about older trans folks, which Pint emphasized as essential given the lack of storytelling about living a long and joyful life as a trans person.
“We wanted to showcase the full gamut of feelings and affects and experiences of trans people,” Pint said.
Attendees, creators and organizers agreed this was not the space to “explain transness for cisgender legibility,” lament the state of the world, or discuss politics. The goal was to embrace and uplift trans identity and experience in everyday life.
This lifted a weight off everyone’s back, creating a sense of ease and lightheartedness. It could’ve become escapism, but some creatives had a different idea in mind.
“We’re lucky to build a community. We’re creating a movement that’s self-sufficient,” said Mariel Sharp, producer of the short “Walk Me Home.”
“We’re saying we don’t need cishet film bros to make things,” joked the film’s director and Sharp’s partner, Kaye Adelaide.
Adelaide directed the script written by lead actor Andi McQueen, which follows an “anxious enby” walking home at night as a supernatural forest begins to creep around them.
McQueen originally sent the script to Adelaide for notes, but Adelaide insisted that they make it. Utilizing resources from their group of friends, offering their skills in editing, makeup and production, they shot the film in a few months during fall 2024.
“Trans tension was front of mind,” Adelaide said.
She told the story of creating fake transphobic graffiti during shooting for a gag joke midway through, only to later see the same tags organically appear around Montreal.
“‘Keep your hands off our kids’ sort of thing. [...] This environment is here, it’s just ready to boil over,” Adelaide said.
Despite news from the U.S. dominating discourse, Canada currently faces its own rising tide of transphobia. Headlines swirl about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s anti-trans agenda, which faces backlash over policies requiring anyone competing in girls’ sports to sign a form confirming their sex assigned at birth.
Pint even said that some journalists attended their festival last year, only to not respond to communications this year. The creator, however, hopes that events like Exposures can combat this bleak outlook.
“It’s not just a film festival, but a community event, somewhere we can come together, be together, and make a trans space,” Pint explained. “[It feels] like a good momentum that we can keep building on, and hopefully people understand the need for these events given the current climate we’re in.”
Undeniable heart flowed through the purple-pink screening room. The space filled up quickly, couples scootched chairs closer together, attendees waved to friends, and Pint brought more seats to fit everyone.
“Is anyone else in need of a chair?” they called out with a cheeky grin.
Exposures is collecting donations to help “make trans cinema accessible to all.” More information can be found at https://exposuresmtl.com/.
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