Sat May 26 | 9:00 pm | VIFC

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Curated by Lynne Fernie

Curator in attendance.

Read the essay that accompanies this program From Hot Rollers to Harleys: Rebelling, Conforming and Gender Identities

While one grandmother uses traditional ideas about feminine behaviour to assist her grandchild through a sexual and gender transition from male to female, another group of grandmothers rebel against gender and age stereotypes to resist internalizing the impotent images of old women.

Girl Inside

Director: Maya Gallus, Producer: Justine Pimlott, Canada, 2007, 70 minutes
Director and producer in attendance.
Twenty-six-year-old Madison is in the process of becoming a girl and Vivien, her apple-martini-drinking 80-year-old glamorous grandmother, has taken on the job of advising her on all things feminine. While Vivien’s attempts to school Madison in the mysterious codes of fashion and behaviour are often hilarious, her straight-up questions raise profound issues about the performative nature of gender and it’s relationship to sexuality. Filmed over two years, Madison’s gender metamorphosis unfolds as an emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey of self-discovery that is as important as the physical journey of hormones and surgery. Love trumps discomfort as her family in rural New Brunswick struggles to accept that they now have a daughter instead of a son, a sister instead of a brother. And a year into her transition, she and her best male friend Cameron fall in love. He now sees Madison as completely female and accompanies her through the final stages of surgery and recovery. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, this sweet coming of age-and-gender story is both a portrait of the relationship between a young woman and her grandmother, and an exploration of what it means to become a woman.

Preceded by:

Hell’s Grannies

Director: Jason Gileno, Canada, 2006, 24 minutes
One day, 75-year-old Sybil Rampen realized she was growing old and decided she wouldn’t go quietly. So she wrote a book and formed a motorcycle gang of grannies: they wear leather, they have a clubhouse, they do TV shows, pose for photographs and generally raise hell, love and laughter. They even attend the infamous Friday the 13th biker convention in Port Dover, Ontario to sell Sybil’s book. Director Jason Gileno lovingly captures the spirit of an extraordinary group of geriatric rebels who play with the stereotypes of age and gender.

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