AFK | Screenings

CO-PRESENTATION: Vital Transgressions, Toronto Queer Film Festival

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Vital Trangressions is a 4-year research-creation laboratory that tests the dynamic and troubled relationship between queer transgression and queer activism on screen.

When Foucault was invoking transgression and the spiral to approach Bataille, he was working within a disciplinary paradigm where queer/Trans bodies and subjects remained largely outlawed and shunned by our states, churches, and societies. This was the era of The Body Politic, Toronto’s gay liberation magazine, where transgression and activism famously co-existed in a tense and productive duet. Half a century later, we find our LGBTQ+ selves at the centre of a homo-nationalized mainstream, embraced by banks and vodka brands, ‘proud’ citizens possessing pink rights and rainbow mortgages. Neo-liberalism has sought to domesticate and monetize our communities. Yet in the face of such domestication, questions of on-screen transgression and activism remain even more urgent for a new generation. At their core is an aching dilemma: if transgression’s signature move is productive outrage, and activism’s raison d’etre is tactical efficacy, are the two doomed to stick to their respective lanes — or can they jump the tracks (and meet in the gutter)?

VT invites a community of thinkers and makers to explore this key question: in our post-queer moment, can activism and transgression

meaningfully collaborate, reigniting the promise of new queer/trans cinemas today?

Each film/filmmaker/s will have 15 minutes to present their films. Following the 6 presentations, we’ll have 20 min of dialogue with a

moderator between the 6 projects, and then open it up for questions.

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Date / Time
October 16, 2026
2:00PM – 4:00PM EDT

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all. 

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us. 

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.