Pissoir | |
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Directed by | John Greyson |
Written by | John Greyson |
Produced by | John Greyson |
Starring |
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Cinematography |
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Edited by |
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Music by | Glenn Schellenberg |
Release date |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Pissoir, retitled Urinal in some countries, was the first feature film directed and released by John Greyson. [1] Released in 1988, the film's central character is an unnamed man who conjures a circle of dead literary and artistic figures, including Sergei Eisenstein, Dorian Gray, Yukio Mishima, Frida Kahlo, and Langston Hughes, to help him formulate a response to police crackdowns on gay sex venues in Toronto, [2] blending fiction with documentary as Greyson also includes quotes from real Canadian journalistic and political figures, including Barbara Amiel and Svend Robinson, about civil liberties and public morality. [3]
The film's cast includes Paul Bettis, Pauline Carey, Lance Eng, and Olivia Rojas. [4]
The film premiered at the 1988 Toronto International Film Festival. [3] It was subsequently screened at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival in 1989, [5] where it won a Teddy Award for Best Essay Film. [6]
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
Paul Lewis Quarrington was a Canadian novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, musician and educator.
Bruce McDonald is a Canadian film and television director, writer, and producer. Born in Kingston, Ontario, he rose to prominence in the 1980s as part of the loosely-affiliated Toronto New Wave.
A urinal is a sanitary plumbing fixture for urination only. Urinals are often provided in public toilets for male users in Western countries. They are usually used in a standing position. Urinals can be with manual flushing, automatic flushing, or without flushing, as is the case for waterless urinals. They can be arranged as single sanitary fixtures or in a trough design without privacy walls. Urinals designed for females also exist but are rare. It is possible for females to use stand-up urinals using a female urination device.
Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, also known as Cinéfest and Cinéfest Sudbury is an annual film festival in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, held over nine days each September. It is one of the largest film festivals in Canada.
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He wrote the screenplay of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). He later continued his collaboration with Scorsese, writing or co-writing Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Schrader is more prolific as a director: his 23 films include Blue Collar (1978), Hardcore (1979), American Gigolo (1980), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Light Sleeper (1992), Affliction (1997), and First Reformed (2017), with the last of these earning him his first Academy Award nomination. Schrader's work frequently depicts "man in a room" stories which feature isolated, troubled men confronting an existential crisis.
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John Greyson is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
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The Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival. For the most part, the jury consists of organisers of gay and lesbian film festivals, who view films screened in all sections of the Berlinale; films do not have to have been part of the festival's official competition stream to be eligible for Teddy awards. Subsequently, a list of films meeting criteria for LGBT content is selected by the jury, and a 3,000-Euro Teddy is awarded to a feature film, a short film and a documentary.
The 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 10 and September 19, 2009. The opening night gala presented the Charles Darwin biography Creation. The Young Victoria, based on the early years of Queen Victoria, closed the festival on September 19.
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A pissoir is a French invention, common in Europe, that provides a urinal in public space with a lightweight structure. The availability of pissoirs aims to reduce urination onto buildings, sidewalks, or streets. They can be freestanding and without screening, with partial screening, or fully enclosed.
The 13th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 8 and September 17, 1988. Midnight Madness programme was introduced at the festival. The festival screened more than 300 films from all over the world. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by Pedro Almodóvar won the People's Choice Award at the festival, which later nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at Academy Award.
The 18th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 9 and September 18, 1993. M. Butterfly by David Cronenberg was selected as the opening film.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film is an annual juried film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian feature film.
Kazik Radwanski is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. His early short films have been cited as part of the New Canadian Cinema movement. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2012 with Tower. His second feature film, How Heavy This Hammer (2015), screened at film festivals around the world and received critical acclaim.
The Toronto New Wave refers to a loose-knit group of filmmakers from Toronto who came of age during the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Making of Monsters is a 1991 Canadian short film, directed by John Greyson. Made while Greyson was a student at the Canadian Film Centre, the film's premise is that playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht is alive and living in Toronto, and actively interfering with the production of "Monsters", a heavily sanitized movie of the week about the 1985 death of Kenneth Zeller in a gaybashing attack.