Join us for a special livestream screening featuring a selection of UNDO Fellow Theo Jean Cuthand’s films, presented alongside ideas and excerpts from the UNDO publication They say there are no spirits. As a filmmaker whose work spans decades, Theo has continuously explored Queer identity, Indigeneity, sexuality, madness, and love, offering deeply personal yet politically urgent reflections on lived experience.

This program offers a rare opportunity to view nine of Theo’s films, tracing his evolving artistic and personal journey. Among them is Dreams of Sunlight Through Trees, his most recent short film, which intimately documents his transition over a year and nine months, set against the backdrop of escalating anti-trans legislation. This livestream will be the final chance to see this film before it leaves our platform!

The films in this selection reveal his unwavering commitment to self-documentation, from early reflections on gender and sexuality in Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory to speculative imaginings of a post-colonial future in Reclamation. Whether drawing from personal experience or envisioning alternate worlds, Theo’s films resist fixed narratives, instead embracing identity as fluid, complex, and shaped by lived reality.

Note:
This is an online event, you can join in from anywhere in the world!
UNDO Members can tune in for free – simply sign up for the livestream below!
If you’re not a Member, you can grab a ticket!

Bios

Theo Jean Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1978, and grew up in Saskatoon. Since 1995 he has been making short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity and love, and Indigeneity, which have screened in festivals internationally, including the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Mix Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity in Sao Paolo, ImagineNATIVE in Toronto, Ann Arbour Film Festival, Images in Toronto, Berlinale in Berlin, New York Film Festival, Outfest,and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. His work has also exhibited at galleries including the Remai in Saskatoon, The National Gallery in Ottawa, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, MoMA in New York, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Film and Video at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2005, and his Masters of Arts in Media Production at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2015. He has made commissioned work for Urban Shaman and Videopool in Winnipeg, Cinema Politica in Montreal, VIMAF in Vancouver, and Bawaadan Collective in Canada. In 2020 he completed working on a 2D video game called A Bipolar Journey based on his experience learning and dealing with his bipolar disorder. It can be found here. He has also written three feature screenplays and has performed at Live At The End Of The Century in Vancouver, Queer City Cinema’s Performatorium in Regina, and 7a*11d in Toronto. In 2017 he won the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. He is a Whitney Biennial 2019 artist. He has made 32 videos and films and counting. Currently he has a feature film in development. He is a trans man who uses He/Him pronouns. He is of Plains Cree and Scots descent, a member of Little Pine First Nation, and currently resides in Toronto, Canada.