JUCK is a 17-minute film which is a hybrid between documentary, dance and fiction. The film depicts the all female dance group JUCK who made a name for themselves in 2013 with a video that became a viral hit all over the world. The word “JUCK” is Swedish for “HUMP” and their groundbreaking appearance pushed the boundaries for how we are used to seeing the female body. JUCK questions the positions of object and subject. They provoke, inspire and break norms. The film poses the question: what is femininity?

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Curators Notes: I chose JUCK because it's a documentary made by women about women, because it's sexy and true. Juck is the revolutionary power of the body that, with a simple gesture, is able to demolish centuries of abuse and conformism. It's a little story told with poetry and precision that gets straight to your brain and will push you to jump on your chair, no matter your gender! '

Derived from the performance, 'FRUITTY' by Chris Owen. A yellow hose ribbons through a disused Argos, where four bodies curl and crumple, and bits from the floor stick to the sweat on their backs. Four flourescent-lit figures become four lights in the dark; a phone-lit face-off. Something has to break.

Ideas of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ pervade discussions of gender and sexuality. How then do queer people find their place within 'the natural', or within nature itself?

In this short filmic celebration the viewer is invited to a close exploration of a large tree, celebrating its resilient growth and beauty, while the collaged and fractured imagery shows 'the natural' as something fragile, created through framing and perception. Accompanying voices in improvised song hint at a freedom beyond the repression of hetero-normative constraints and merge with the sounds of the forest.

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Curators Notes:  How do queer people court affinity with the 'natural world', find their place within 'nature'? Grafting images of an ancient tree, rooted in place - withstanding rapid cycles of birth and decay that mark human life - Emma Thatcher's photo collage animation invites us to consider how 'the natural' is always a question of framing and perception. Accompanied by a chorus of feral, improvised voices, the gentle exploration of trunk, bark and arms embrace and envelope.

Footage from the birthday of the wonderful Bet Van Beeran, who was an 'out' lesbian in Amsterdam from the 1920s onwards

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Curators Notes: Bet Van Beeren was an out dyke in Amsterdam who wore Sailor suits and often disappeared for two weeks at a time. She opened her bar Cafe t’Mandje in 1927 and ran it until her death in 1967, when her sister Greet took it over. The bar closed in 1982 due to drug problems in the neighbourhood. Over the next 26 years Greet, who lived upstairs, cleaned the bar every week, preserving its decor and the thousands of souvenirs from past visitors. In 2007 Bet & Greet’s niece Diana reopened Cafe t’Mandje.

A man scatters ashes multiple times in the same day. Who is he, and where are the ashes coming from?

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Curators Notes:  Diener is a beautiful, elegiac micro-drama filmed in the mountains of North Wales. A solitary male figure scatters ashes, again and again. For me, it evokes the experience of finding solace away from society in the open landscape, and the long cultural history of gay men writing about this - AE Housman and his 'luckless lads' especially

A reflection on religious texts, beliefs, information, social media and sense of space in contemporary times.

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Curators notes: Sandeep's video touches upon Hindu mythology, social media and sense of place. I have chosen this film because it reflects our current times in which our foundation and sense of reality seems to be constantly called into question.
 

A popular lesbian ‘commercial,’ 110 images of sensual touching montages in A, B, C, D rolls of ‘kinaesthetic’ editing. “The images are varied and very quickly presented in the early part of the film, introducing the characters, if you will. The second half of the film slows down measurably and all of a sudden I found myself holding my breath as I watched the images of lovemaking sensually and artistically captured.” – Elizabeth Lay, Plexus.

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Curators Notes: I found out about it in a book by Barbara Hammer called HAMMER! MAKING MOVIES OUT OF SEX AND LIFE. On the edge of each page in the book is a frame from Dyke Tactics - a flip book within a book of two naked women touching each other. When the film was released in 1973 it was the first “lesbian lovemaking film by a lesbian” and was heavily censored when Hammer tried to screen it in public. Hammer’s writings on the politics of education, sex, identity, the power imbalances in institutions and ways of building queer community are brilliant.  

“I want the borders to stretch as high as our imagination, to push the limits to allow all our energies, every conceivable form and manner of expression to be ours.” - Hammer in response to the censorship of Dyke Tactics

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How might we queer the processes of urban regeneration? How might we consult with nonhuman as well as human communities? Artist Paul Hurley recorded a number of walks with humans, cats, dogs, plants, Siri and the weather, as part of a residency at University of Bristol's Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus. This intriguing and amusing film, produced with Paul Samuel White, sniffs around the city and its multispecies geographies, histories and futures.

‘Located in the darkness, a place of no boundaries, Delilah is a ‘meditation on violence’, love and survival.

Interchangeable elements of the warrior, the Sorceress and the lover weave a ritual, creating a dialogue of forces that shifts boundaries. This conversation of gesture and sound moves through tension and release, power and abandon. “The outside is within us. You moved like a warrior but I could not hold you.”

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Curators Notes: In my field of animation, camera and lights tend to be fixed, while movement is created in the artwork. My appreciation of Delilah is because, by contrast, the camera and lighting are so active and imbued with motion. Through a highly mobile camera, figures sculpted from light, and careful choreography of gesture and the gaze, Syed builds a charged dynamic of intimacy and estrangement. Deploying such conventions of film noir, the complexity and power of the femme fatale is redistributed across the figures of three intriguing female characters.