Filmmaker, performance artist and author Thirza Jean Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Saskatoon. Since 1995, she has made short experimental videos and films on sexuality, insanity, queerness, love and indigenousness which have been and are screened at numerous international film festivals including Tribeca, Mix Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity Sao Paolo, ImagineNATIVE Festival Toronto, Frameline San Francisco, Outfest Los Angeles, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Berlinale.

In this programme, curated by Thirza Cuthand, we show not only her most recent work, the NDN SURVIVAL TRILOGY (2019), but a number of selected earlier works which can partially be seen on her website but are too rarely seen on the big screen.

In EXTRACTIONS, the first film in the NDN Survival Trilogy, the filmmaker creates complex connections between destructive raw material extraction and the booming foster child industry which even today separates many indigenous children from their biological parents. As Cuthand reflects on how these industries influence their lives, she considers freezing her ova so she can have an indigenous baby herself someday. In LESS LETHAL FETISHES, she describes her more than latent gas mask fetish and the political controversies in her art: she too sees herself as caught up in an art and film industry that is financed by dirty money – and is painfully conscious of her complicity in suppression, exploitation and environmental pollution. Finally, RECLAMATION is a dystopian satirical decolonialisation story in which three indigenous survivors who are left on earth discuss their plans after the whites have finally left the destroyed planet for Mars. There are also several queer girl/fairy-tale films, a video about lesbian vampires' relationship problems, a piece on Cuthand's own decision against transitioning, and an indigenous fantasy film. (Katja Wiederspahn)

Guest: Katja Wiederspahn. In cooperation with Queertactics, Vienna.