A National Film Board of Canada production

Knowing Gaze is a loving roast of gay culture. This animated short moves fluidly through a series of interconnected vignettes—from online personas to offline hookups, from the thrift store to the dance floor to the bathhouse. 

Rendered in expressive brush strokes, the story unfolds as candid conversations carried by acidic dialogue and vulnerable interior monologues. At its core, the film probes the tenderness and tension of modern gay identity. Beneath a million witty one-liners, the soul cries out. 

A maximalist narrative quilt of contemporary gay life—every text left on read, every thrifted designer boot, every cancelled eyeshadow palette, every night out, every nightmare, every knowing gaze.  

THE SUBJECT

For those who haven’t seen it, what is your film about?

Knowing Gaze is a portrait of contemporary gay life. Queer spaces are paired with various points of contemporary gay discourse, threaded together by the general events of any given gay weekend.

Tell us about the different characters in the film, who function both as archetypes and as complex, vulnerable individuals.

Though they are not named in this short film, we can say there are five key characters (in order of appearance): the terminally online social justice warrior, the unattainable hot guy, the masculine-presenting general gay guy who is funny sometimes, the cherub cub and the fierce femme fallen alien.

Tell us about the locations in the film: Why are they important to the gay and queer community, and what do they represent for you?

I love this question! The big thrift shop is the community centre, a third space where like-minded individuals meet and exchange ideas. The bathhouse is a magical realist space connecting timeless gay rituals and male beauty ideals of antiquity. The club is an ambiguous space of heightened emotion and possibility; illicit substance in spatial form. The nude/gay beach is the only space outdoors in daylight; it represents a space of safety and healing.

Lastly, I’ll note the use of digital space, a dissonant, unnatural and nuisanced space of unwellness characterized by the soft blue glow of LED screens.

THE TECHNIQUE

You juxtapose a contemporary digital style with a painterly aesthetic inspired by art history (with influences ranging from ancient Greek statues to painters like Henri Matisse). Could you explain why you chose to combine these two seemingly opposing aesthetics?

Traditional and digital media are indeed seemingly opposing aesthetics. They have opposing inherent emotional tones and opposing strengths and weaknesses.

Traditional media has an intrinsic aesthetic beauty that is useful for supporting emotionally sincere stories; there is a coherence between real media and authentic sentiment. Conversely, digital media feels inherently cold (and can look “cool”), harsh, sharp, polished and, in my opinion, can work very well for conveying irony.

How does the viewer feel when they see a computer-generated image reeking of human imperfection? … I hope they laugh.

I say “seemingly opposing aesthetics” because I want to have the best of both worlds, to have my cake and eat it, too.

What animation techniques and artistic challenges did you explore while making this film?

Using paint on glass is a bit of a technical challenge because it’s quite slow, time consuming and physically demanding—I was doing it standing up, hunched over the glass. Another big challenge with this film was trying to keep the character continuity. The characters change place, context and outfits throughout the film, so a lot of effort was put into trying to help the audience understand when they are seeing and hearing a character from earlier in the film.

The characters’ movements are striking and give the impression of a contemporary animated ballet. What is your secret for designing and choreographing these actions?

I love that reaction! I have had an inclination towards dance and acrobatics since I was very young. From the age of 12 to about 17, I was a gymnast, which I think is definitely related to this very strong sense of physicality the characters have. My undergrad schooling was very emphatic on figure drawing, so it was a good place for me, as a person who is naturally inspired by dance, to get a lot of practice with gesture drawing.

THE MESSAGE

The film highlights questions of gender within the gay community itself, particularly the duality between more feminine and more masculine forms of presentation. Why was it important for you to address this subject?

On the one hand, it just feels natural to try and capture this duality within gay culture because it’s so present and influential in the social and sexual dynamics of gay men.

It felt important to write into the film the precarity of non-binary identity. It’s a topic and, in some ways, a concept that is so broad, so charged and so in need of nuance and honesty. I felt like I could add a little something to the discourse that I didn’t feel I was hearing much of, but that I suspect many of us are seeing and feeling.

The memorable opening scene is a clever parody of the art world, complete with intellectual jargon and contemporary identity-related discourse. What were you aiming to express with this scene?

I am trying to show that when the emphasis is solely on “saying the right thing,” one might not say anything at all. The rest of the film intends to show queers saying things that are hard to say publicly or out loud at all. Things that aren’t tidy, “woke” hashtags.

THE TONE

The film seems to be both a tribute to and a roast of the gay community you are part of. Can you talk about this very specific tone, and were you concerned about potentially offending certain sensitivities?

As your question implies, the film has a primarily comedic tone. This “very specific tone” is self-aware, ironic, half-joking. The characters say the taboo thing authentically from the safety of close friendship. I definitely worried about walking a tightrope of irreverence on these social issues, so I scrutinized the script and images constantly until I felt as confident as possible in every choice.

Let’s talk about the film’s language: the expressions used are specific to a certain demographic (young people who are chronically online) and form a kind of modern queer poetry. Why did you choose this language and fast-paced delivery, even at the risk that some viewers might not fully grasp the dialogue?

Choosing to write and direct the film’s dialogue in this way was informed by how I express myself in the real “gay world,” which I am caricaturing for the film.

The film’s dialogue and delivery intend to reflect something true about our humour in the gay community (which of course is not a monolith).

I think committing fully to an artistic decision like using the quasi-dialectal vernacular of gay humour is very important. I think presenting the culture and language in this uncompromising way is actually the best way for people to learn and understand this “modern queer poetry” because it’s in context and, to circle back to your last question, there is a clear sense of tone. More and more, I think that people actually derive more meaning and significance from tone than words themselves.

You chose to voice some of the characters yourself. What motivated this decision?

I voice “Pisces Moon,” the terminally online blue-haired social justice warrior from the first scene, as well as Drie, the blue-skinned second main character. For one thing, it felt safe to have me represent these characters because they reflect my experiences, and so I feel I can fully own everything they say.

With Pisces Moon, the recording we used is actually a very, very early recording from before the film was even in pre-production. We really liked the little mistakes in it, and the raw, natural energy.

One major thing that made me want to voice Drie is the spoken-word rage spiral in the bathhouses of antiquity. I had a very, very specific vision for the delivery, and it felt most simple and efficient to just take it on myself.

THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE

What is your greatest source of pride in relation to this film (pun intended)?

That I finished it, ha ha ha. But in all honesty, I really put more effort into this film than can be put into words. As I think about the question, I find myself hopeful that my greatest source of pride for Knowing Gaze is still waiting for me after the film finally gets to meet its audience.

How does this new work fit into your multidisciplinary artistic practice and your filmography?

This film is likely the most significant and large-scale work of my career. The only other project that feels comparable is my children’s book Rain Boy, published by Chronicle Books. Both are projects that combine authorship and creative freedom with commercial-level resources and support.

Knowing Gaze is very much the sum of every animated short I’ve made prior, while also pulling from the hundreds if not thousands of paintings and drawings I’ve conceived over my career. These shorts varied greatly in tone and techniques, and this was the first film where I tried to combine a wider tonal range, aiming to forge a new comedic tone that I hadn’t written in before. My little 2D watercolour gay guy planet was not built in a day. 😉

Why make this film with the National Film Board of Canada?

From a young age, I always really felt a bit repelled by the esoteric pretense of the art world and, conversely, had a deep appreciation for artwork that had beauty and meaning that was widely accessible and comprehensible. I think this characteristic of my sensibility is congruent with the National Film Board’s core mission of creating films for the public, which necessarily implies accessibility.

I also have to acknowledge the tremendous quality of the art that has been produced by the NFB because it is this incredibly inspiring archive that has made working with them my dream since I was a teenager.

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