Laura Horak investigates the history of transgender and gender-nonconforming film and media in the United States and Canada, and the history of sexuality in U.S. and Scandinavian cinema. Supported by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, Horak is researching the history of trans, Two-Spirit, and gender-nonconforming filmmaking in Canada and the United States, and creating a pilot online database to promote these filmmakers.

She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934 (Rutgers University Press, 2016), co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana University Press, 2014), and Unwatchable (Rutgers University Press, January 2019). She also co-edited a special issue of Somatechnics on trans cinematic bodies. She regularly curates film screenings in Canada, Europe, and the United States.

A film artist of memory and association, Philip Hoffman has long been recognized as Canada’s pre-eminent diary filmmaker. Notable works include What These Ashes Wanted, All Fall Down, and Slaughterhouse. He currently teaches at York University in Toronto, and since 1994, he has been the artistic director of the Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm), a 1-week workshop in artisinal filmmaking which occurs on his farm in southern Ontario every summer. He has also given these 'Process Cinema' workshops in Cuba (EICTV), Spain, Helsinki, London, Halifax, Calgary, and Dawson City. In 2016 Hoffman received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. His new film,Vulture, uses several processing methods including flower/plant hand-processing, and follows grazing farm animals in their minute inter-species exchanges.

Ryan Conrad is Adjunct Research Faculty at the Feminist Institute for Social Transformation at Carleton University and previously held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship with Archive/Counter-Archive from 2019-2022. He is currently working on his manuscript entitled Radical VIHsion: Canadian AIDS Film & Video. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Concordia University and an MFA from Maine College of Art. He is an active film and video maker.

Peter Dickinson is a Professor at Simon Fraser University, with a joint appointment in the School for the Contemporary Arts and the Department of English. He is also directs SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies. A performance studies scholar, Peter has published extensively on theatre, dance, film, and performance art, and he is the author, editor, or co-editor of ten books and special journal issues. Peter’s own plays include The Objecthood of Chairs (SFU Woodward’s, 2010), Positive ID (Berkeley Theatre, Toronto, 2012), Long Division (Pi Theatre, 2016/17), and The Bathers (excerpt, Zee Zee Theatre, 2017). As a writer, researcher, facilitator, outside eye, collaborator, and occasional mover, Peter has worked with several Vancouver-based dance artists and companies, including Justine A. Chambers and Alexa Mardon, plastic orchid factory, Ziyian Kwan/dumb instrument Dance, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Kokoro Dance, Vanessa Goodman/action at a distance, Lesley Telford/Inverso Dance, and Rob Kitsos.

Dr. Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof is a Toronto-based filmmaker and scholar. Her interests as an artist and scholar are interdisciplinary, and her works often probe intersections of art, body, and technology. Izabella’s films and installations have been recognized with awards, commissions, and public grants, and have been included in over 150 public presentations at major international film festivals, art museums, and centres in Canada and abroad, most notably: TIFF, Toronto; IFFR, Rotterdam; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria; and ZKM, Karlsruhe. Izabella’s writings on art, cinema, technology and culture, have appeared in academic journals, and in anthologies on media arts and on screendance, including chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies (2016) and Dance’s Duet with the Camera: Motion Pictures (2016). She is Associate Professor in Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts, and a member of three graduate programs (Communication and Culture, Documentary Media, and Film + Photographic Preservation Collections Management).

The recipient of the 2000 Toronto Arts Award for film/video and the 2007 Bell Award in Video Art, John Greyson is a filmmaker, video artist, writer, activist and educator whose productions have won accolades at festivals throughout the world.

Feature films include: Urinal (1988 – Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival); Zero Patience (1993 – Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival); Lilies (1996 – Best Film Genie, Best Film at festivals in Montreal, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco); Uncut (1997, Honourable Mention, Berlin Film Festival); The Law of Enclosures (2000, Best Actor Genie); Proteus, co-created with Jack Lewis (2003); and Fig Trees (2008 – Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Berlin Film Festival). Film/video shorts include: The Kipling Trilogy (1984-5), The ADS Epidemic (1987), The Making of Monsters (1991 – Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival; Best Short Film Teddy – Berlin Film Festival), Herr (1998) and Packin’ (2001).

As a director for television, his credits include episodes for such series as Queer as Folk, Made In Canada (Best Director Gemini, 2002), Drop the Beat and Welcome to Paradox.

Professor Greyson’s publications include Urinal and Other Stories (Power Plant/Art Metropole) and co-editor of Queer Looks, a critical anthology of gay/lesbian media theory (Routledge). He is a co-investigator on York’s Future Cinema Lab, a joint research project with Film Professors Janine Marchessault and Caitlin Fisher. Supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Future Cinema Lab is a state-of-the-art media research facility into new digital storytelling techniques and how these can critically transform a diverse array of state-of-the-art screens.

John Greyson is active in various anti-censorship, AIDS, peace and queer activist media projects, including The Olive Project, Deep Dish TV, Blah Blah Blah and AIDS Action Now. His contributions as a member and through service on the boards of arts organizations include V/Tape Distribution, Inside Out Film/Video Festival, the Euclid Theatre, Trinity Square Video, Charles St. Video, LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers Toronto) and Beaver Hall Artists Housing Co-op.

Professor Greyson has taught film and video theory and production in Canada, the United States, Cuba and South Africa. He joined the full-time faculty in York’s Film Department in 2005.

Born 1948, London, Ontario. Graduate of Guelph Collegiate, Western University, and Columbia University. Teacher, programmer, writer, critic, activist, swimmer, cyclist, cook, pianist, and sauna aficionado. Retired in 2017 after 41 years teaching film studies and sexuality/queer studies at Concordia University.

Author, compiler, or editor of 14 books, the most recent being Confess: Constructing the Self in Media and the Arts within the Third Sexual Revolution (co-edited with Brandon Arroyo, McGill Queen's University Press, 2019).

Co-editor with Matthew Hays of 19-book series Queer Film Classics (Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver 2008-2019).

Winner of SCMS Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2017) for the monograph The Conscience of Cinema: The Work of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989 (Amsterdam University Press). Founder of Concordia AIDS Project/Community Lecture Series on HIV/AIDS (1993-2017), and of Queer Media Database Canada Quebec (2006+).

Visiting Professor, Film Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad (2018-19).

Jonathan MacKenzie is a digital media law analyst specializing in IP, copyright, privacy law, and cultural policy issues. He completed his LLB at Dalhousie University and LLM at Osgoode Hall. Jonathan holds a BA in Political Science from York University and a diploma in Broadcasting and Advertising from Seneca College. As a policy and research analyst and consultant, Jonathan has worked for organizations including the Canadian Independent Music Association and eCampusOntario. He has taught courses on Information Communications Technology and Digital Media Ethics at York University and Wilfrid Laurier University. He currently advises on federal regulatory and policy issues for the Canadian telecommunications industry.