The University of British Columbia
Robson Square
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The Floating Man: Canadian Film Premiere
October 22, 2023
6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
at UBC Robson Square (map)
About the Event
This Canadian premiere of The Floating Man by Michael V. Smith, filmmaker and professor at the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the Okanagan campus, is an intimate memoir that unpacks Smith’s journey as a radical drag performer and genderqueer. The screening will be open to all and free of charge, registration is required.
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 much of Smith’s provocative art practice from Vancouver in the ’90s and 2000s, to examine a lifetime of untrue stories about his body. One featured project includes Smith on a hitch-hiking road trip from Vancouver to the 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 body suit, 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 about a person we see on the street?
The Floating Man is a timely film about gender fluidity, creativity, and the power of art to transform a life.
Event Schedule
6:00 PM Doors open, light refreshments will be available
6:30 PM Program begins, welcoming remarks
6:45 PM Screening begins
8:10 PM Audience Q&A with filmmaker, Michael V. Smith
9:00 PM Program ends
Speakers
Michael V. Smith‘s films have played in festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the New York Video Festival, and the British Film Institute. 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 member of the Miss Nomer Collective, their genderqueer short film Girl on Girl won the Colin Campbell Award for Best Canadian Male Short and the Best Canadian Female Short Award at the Inside Out Festival in Toronto.
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, and the Vancouver Comedy Festival. 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 UBC, Okanagan campus, where he teaches Creative Writing.
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