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Animal Pride: Nature’s Coming Out Story
October 1 at 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Free
Join us for a 45-minute screening of Animal Pride: Nature’s Coming out Story, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.
This documentary addresses the nexus of culture and science, examining how historically zoology has suppressed evidence of queer animal behaviours. It argues that contemporary approaches to zoology that make room for animal pride expand human understanding of animals. This panel offers a range of perspectives from Indigenous, Queer Studies and Sciences engaging with the film director.
In Animal Pride: Nature’s Coming Out Story, Queer naturalist Connel Bradwell challenges mainstream biology’s blind spot for queer animal behaviour in nature. Schooled in the birds and the bees, survival of the fittest, The Origin of Species, Connel sees the disconnect—how can humans be Queer, while animals supposedly aren’t?
After observing same-sex behaviour in orcas, Connel embarks on a journey to unveil nature’s true diversity of gender expression and sexuality. Fueled by his love for the natural world, Connel discovers the science behind same-sex parenting in seabirds, hermaphrodite slugs, and the hidden history of same-sex penguin behaviour. Not your typical wildlife documentary, Animal Pride celebrates diversity and presents a riotous rebellion against stereotypes. It also has the capacity to fundamentally shift how we see the natural world and our place within it.
We’ve all heard the rhetoric—that being queer isn’t natural. Connel’s irreverent approach takes a wrecking ball to the ivory tower of heteronormative science, demanding answers to why the world has been missing out on the wild, wonderful, and downright sexy side of nature.
There’s no longer any doubt: Nature’s queer as f***!
After the screening and panel, the audience will be invited to ask questions of the director and panellists.
This event is organized by Cultural Studies professors, Drs. Maria Alexopoulos and Daniel Keyes (FCCS) and Lindee Lemon of the UBC Queer Faculty & Staff Collective. The panel will include the film’s director Rio Mitchell, associate professor Chase Mason (Biology, Faculty of Science), assistant professor Onyx Sloan Morgan (Community Culture and Global Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Principal’s Research Chair (Tier II) in Communities, Justice, and Sustainability), Assistant Professor Bill Cohen (Education), and lecturer Maria Alexopoulos (Cultural Studies, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies).
This event is FREE and open to all, and aims to offer a safe space for discussing diversity and inclusion.
This film screening and panel discussion is organized by the Cultural Studies program with support from the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and the Department of Community, Culture & Global Studies at UBO Okanagan and UBC Okanagan Equity and Inclusion Office.
About the director
A bright light in a new generation of filmmaking, director Rio Mitchell is growing a spectacular industry and award recognition, working agnostically between linear documentary, interactive museum installations, and large-scale immersive media experiences. Across an innovative range, Rio produced several immersive and short films installed in the Human History wing of the ambitious new Royal Alberta Museum. She went on to become the Creative Producer for Edmonton’s Indigenous People’s Experience: a permanent 8000ft’ immersive-media Indigenous cultural centre, winning the 2021 THEA Outstanding Achievement Award, recognizing it as the year’s most outstanding heritage centre worldwide. In linear documentary, Rio’s directorial debut Fox Chaser (CBC) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards and swept the 2019 Alberta Motion Picture Awards. True Survivors, Rio’s first film for The Nature of Things, was nominated for Best Director at the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers and Best Nature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards.
About the panellists
Dr. Bill Cohen (he, him) is a member of the Nkmaplqs/Okanagan Band with extensive kinship ties to Syilx Okanagan, Nlaka’pamux, and First Peoples throughout BC and Washington; he brings his knowledge of land-based systems of understanding via language (e.g., nsyilxcən did not have gender as part of the language).
Dr. Onyx Sloan Morgan (they/them) grew up on unceded Lekwungen territories and is a queer, non-binary white settler of primarily Irish and Scottish ancestry. Their research is often community-driven and centres on queer, socio-legal, and colonial geographies. Onyx is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography and Principles Research Chair in Communities, Justice, and Sustainability in the Community, Culture and Global Studies Department at UBCO.
Dr. Chase Mason is an Associate Professor of Biology in the Faculty of Science at UBC Okanagan. He is the director of The Mason Laboratory, which focuses on the intersection of plant physiology, genetics, ecology and evolution. The lab’s research program is focused on understanding adaptive functional trait evolution in wild plants, the consequences of domestication and improvement for crop physiology, the role of plant phytochemistry in ecological interactions, as well as the incorporation of plant secondary metabolism into the plant economics spectrum framework.
Dr. Maria Olive Alexopoulos is a lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, working in the field of transnational queer, feminist and gender studies. Her research and teaching are often concerned with how historical and ongoing attachments to fantasies of scientific and medical objectivity have shaped settler colonial understandings and lived experiences of gender, race and sexuality.
