TJ Cuthand
Birth : , Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
History
TJ 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 non-binary Butch boy 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.
Director
An original video diary documenting the director's efforts to have artificial insemination. Cuthand describes his desire to have children of his own and the difficult journey he must take to have them, a journey that is also closely tied to his membership in Canada's First Nations and thus to the question of preserving his indigenous culture.
Director
Writer
On the way to her girlfriend's place, an Indigenous woman is assaulted by her cab driver. Amidst the struggle, she discovers a deadly supernatural power that may help solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance.
Director
On the way to her girlfriend's place, an Indigenous woman is assaulted by her cab driver. Amidst the struggle, she discovers a deadly supernatural power that may help solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance.
Director
Weaving together family narratives and current thoughts on the pandemic, the ethics of representation, and the nature of the sacred, Thirza Cuthand discusses a medicine bundle which was used to heal the artist’s great-great-grandfather from a Gatling gunshot wound in 1885, and her grandfather from the Spanish flu in 1918. In this film, Cuthand reflects on the ways that the bear cub spirit contained within the since-buried bundle has continued to protect her family from the trauma and diseases brought on by colonization.
Writer
Pre-contact, a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.
Director
Pre-contact, a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.
Pre-contact, a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.
Cuthand explores a confusing new gas mask fetish and confronts the feelings associated with being implicated in tear gas manufacturing and chemical companies through her art practice. Beautiful and complicated, this video explores the artists role in larger societal issues along with personal ramifications.
Director
Cuthand explores a confusing new gas mask fetish and confronts the feelings associated with being implicated in tear gas manufacturing and chemical companies through her art practice. Beautiful and complicated, this video explores the artists role in larger societal issues along with personal ramifications.
Director
A personal film about Canada's extraction industry and its detrimental effects on the land and Indigenous peoples. This film parallels resource extraction with the booming child apprehension Industry. As the filmmaker reviews her life and how these Industries have affected her, she also reflects on having her own eggs retrieved and frozen to make an Indigenous baby.
Director
Reclamation is a documentary futurism short about three Indigenous survivors left behind on Earth after white people leave a destroyed planet behind for Mars. While seemingly dystopic, this film is filled with hope and humor and looks at potential solutions for current crises.
Reclamation is a documentary futurism short about three Indigenous survivors left behind on Earth after white people leave a destroyed planet behind for Mars. While seemingly dystopic, this film is filled with hope and humor and looks at potential solutions for current crises.
Producer
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Director of Photography
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Editor
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Writer
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Director
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Host
2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com queers and indigenizes traditional dating site advertisements. Using a Butch NDN 'lavalife" lady (performed by director Thirza Cuthand), 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com seduces the viewer into 2 Spirit "snagging and shacking up" with suggestions of nearby pipeline protests to take your date to, and helpful elders who will matchmake you and tell off disrespectful suitors. It's the culturally appropriate website all single 2 Spirit people wish existed.
Director
Two Longform Lesbian Census takers poll their community to find out important statistics on tops, bottoms, and switches, butches and femmes, cats and dogs, how couples are planning to conceive their children, and more crucial lesbian data! Or they are just trying to get girlfriends!
Producer
New to the 2 Spirit lifestyle? Want to talk to someone in the spirit and the flesh instead of reading The Spirit and the Flesh? We have just the service for you! Call now and for only $19.99 a month you can get instant unlimited telephone access to traditional knowledge and support. We also provide monthly gifts to subscribers. Don't hesitate, ring those phones!
Writer
New to the 2 Spirit lifestyle? Want to talk to someone in the spirit and the flesh instead of reading The Spirit and the Flesh? We have just the service for you! Call now and for only $19.99 a month you can get instant unlimited telephone access to traditional knowledge and support. We also provide monthly gifts to subscribers. Don't hesitate, ring those phones!
Director
New to the 2 Spirit lifestyle? Want to talk to someone in the spirit and the flesh instead of reading The Spirit and the Flesh? We have just the service for you! Call now and for only $19.99 a month you can get instant unlimited telephone access to traditional knowledge and support. We also provide monthly gifts to subscribers. Don't hesitate, ring those phones!
New to the 2 Spirit lifestyle? Want to talk to someone in the spirit and the flesh instead of reading The Spirit and the Flesh? We have just the service for you! Call now and for only $19.99 a month you can get instant unlimited telephone access to traditional knowledge and support. We also provide monthly gifts to subscribers. Don't hesitate, ring those phones!
Director
In the dark night of a prairie city, a vampire considers her future with a fetching mortal. But requiring blood for sustenance brings a host of problems to the relationship.
Writer
Super 8 footage layered with Sharpie marked lines and circles obscuring the image illustrates the story of the filmmaker’s experience with temporary episodes of migraine related blindness and her cousin’s self induced blindness later in life. Paralleling the experience of Blindness with Mental Illness, Cuthand deftly elucidates that any of us could lose any of our abilities at any time.
Director
Super 8 footage layered with Sharpie marked lines and circles obscuring the image illustrates the story of the filmmaker’s experience with temporary episodes of migraine related blindness and her cousin’s self induced blindness later in life. Paralleling the experience of Blindness with Mental Illness, Cuthand deftly elucidates that any of us could lose any of our abilities at any time.
Self (voice)
Super 8 footage layered with Sharpie marked lines and circles obscuring the image illustrates the story of the filmmaker’s experience with temporary episodes of migraine related blindness and her cousin’s self induced blindness later in life. Paralleling the experience of Blindness with Mental Illness, Cuthand deftly elucidates that any of us could lose any of our abilities at any time.
Invited to speak at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, the narrator describes an intimate encounter with an Evil Colonizing Queen which led to Turtle Island's contraction of an invasive European flora.
Director
Invited to speak at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, the narrator describes an intimate encounter with an Evil Colonizing Queen which led to Turtle Island's contraction of an invasive European flora.
Writer
After a long period in life identifying as a Butch Lesbian, Cuthand considers transitioning to male. After a considerable amount of thought and discussion, Cuthand changed her mind and decided to remain a Butch Lesbian. Explaining her decision, she touches on the desire to maintain a connection to the Lesbian community, as well as the sexy genderfucking that happens when one is a masculine woman.
Director
After a long period in life identifying as a Butch Lesbian, Cuthand considers transitioning to male. After a considerable amount of thought and discussion, Cuthand changed her mind and decided to remain a Butch Lesbian. Explaining her decision, she touches on the desire to maintain a connection to the Lesbian community, as well as the sexy genderfucking that happens when one is a masculine woman.
Self
After a long period in life identifying as a Butch Lesbian, Cuthand considers transitioning to male. After a considerable amount of thought and discussion, Cuthand changed her mind and decided to remain a Butch Lesbian. Explaining her decision, she touches on the desire to maintain a connection to the Lesbian community, as well as the sexy genderfucking that happens when one is a masculine woman.
Director
A love story about the history of an interracial family's ancestors and the lands they emigrated from and migrated to. It is also a personal story about being mixed race.
Producer
A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism. Spliced in between her monologues are the binary codes of all the psychiatric drugs she has taken.
Editor
A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism. Spliced in between her monologues are the binary codes of all the psychiatric drugs she has taken.
Director
A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism. Spliced in between her monologues are the binary codes of all the psychiatric drugs she has taken.
Writer
A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism. Spliced in between her monologues are the binary codes of all the psychiatric drugs she has taken.
Director
Anhedonia doesn't play to the back of the church. It shoots directly to the point with poetry and images that evoke controversy in one mind set and passion in another. Depression and suicide are met head on with Cuthand's honesty. Anhedonia shocks people into opening their eyes to the source of the illness in the Aboriginal community. Statistics, split images, words and flesh meld together making this short film long on compassion, screaming out for help and recognition of the mentally ill's dream of someday having a normal life.
Writer
“I think being in the lesbian community means being in a very tiny room with the same five people, four of whom you absolutely despise.”
Editor
“I think being in the lesbian community means being in a very tiny room with the same five people, four of whom you absolutely despise.”
Producer
“I think being in the lesbian community means being in a very tiny room with the same five people, four of whom you absolutely despise.”
Director
“I think being in the lesbian community means being in a very tiny room with the same five people, four of whom you absolutely despise.”
Director
Half-breed Alice attempts to become queen and struggles with the Red Queen and the White Queen's disapproval of her racial transgressions.
Alice
Half-breed Alice attempts to become queen and struggles with the Red Queen and the White Queen's disapproval of her racial transgressions.
Editor
A helpless maiden is tiring of her consensual S&M relationship with her lover, and "evil" queen. She wants to break up. An impassioned monologue in a dungeon with our heroine in wrist cuffs quickly becomes an emotionally messy ending in flames.
Writer
A helpless maiden is tiring of her consensual S&M relationship with her lover, and "evil" queen. She wants to break up. An impassioned monologue in a dungeon with our heroine in wrist cuffs quickly becomes an emotionally messy ending in flames.
Director
A helpless maiden is tiring of her consensual S&M relationship with her lover, and "evil" queen. She wants to break up. An impassioned monologue in a dungeon with our heroine in wrist cuffs quickly becomes an emotionally messy ending in flames.
Helpless Maiden
A helpless maiden is tiring of her consensual S&M relationship with her lover, and "evil" queen. She wants to break up. An impassioned monologue in a dungeon with our heroine in wrist cuffs quickly becomes an emotionally messy ending in flames.
Producer
A girl with a bad habit of falling for older women befriends a boy lover. This video is an examination of relationships between adults and teenagers. It involves ice cream trucks and bowie knives.
Editor
A girl with a bad habit of falling for older women befriends a boy lover. This video is an examination of relationships between adults and teenagers. It involves ice cream trucks and bowie knives.
Writer
A girl with a bad habit of falling for older women befriends a boy lover. This video is an examination of relationships between adults and teenagers. It involves ice cream trucks and bowie knives.
Director
A girl with a bad habit of falling for older women befriends a boy lover. This video is an examination of relationships between adults and teenagers. It involves ice cream trucks and bowie knives.
Producer
A young lesbian, frustrated with a recent relationship, explores bisexuality and has an enlightening discovery.
Editor
A young lesbian, frustrated with a recent relationship, explores bisexuality and has an enlightening discovery.
Director
A young lesbian, frustrated with a recent relationship, explores bisexuality and has an enlightening discovery.
Writer
A young lesbian, frustrated with a recent relationship, explores bisexuality and has an enlightening discovery.
Director
A teenage lesbian's attempts to form friendships with older lesbians leads her on a disturbing ride through the ageist terrain of the lesbian community.
Writer
Sounds and visuals give a “physical” overview of the Land Question, and Cuthand turns the question around regarding what it means to own or be owned.
Director
Sounds and visuals give a “physical” overview of the Land Question, and Cuthand turns the question around regarding what it means to own or be owned.
Director
In this sci-fi tale of conquest and empowerment, sex-toys become beacons for a new species of colonizers.
In 1995 when Thirza Cuthand was 16 she felt like the only lesbian at her Saskatoon high school. This turned out to be untrue, but the lack of visibility in her high school coupled with the lack of representation of queer teenagers in the 90's made her make her first video, a comedic short about teenage lesbian loneliness and trying to bribe classmates to come out with the promise of candy.
Director
In 1995 when Thirza Cuthand was 16 she felt like the only lesbian at her Saskatoon high school. This turned out to be untrue, but the lack of visibility in her high school coupled with the lack of representation of queer teenagers in the 90's made her make her first video, a comedic short about teenage lesbian loneliness and trying to bribe classmates to come out with the promise of candy.
Editor
This video was made to talk about abuse in psychiatry, which I experienced in Montreal. However I chose to let others words explain my feelings on the topic. The visuals are recontextualized shots from The Miracle Worker, starring Patty Duke as Helen Keller. Patty Duke went on to develop bipolar disorder, like me. The main sound used in this video is from the radio emissions captured by the Cassini space probe from Saturn.
Producer
This video was made to talk about abuse in psychiatry, which I experienced in Montreal. However I chose to let others words explain my feelings on the topic. The visuals are recontextualized shots from The Miracle Worker, starring Patty Duke as Helen Keller. Patty Duke went on to develop bipolar disorder, like me. The main sound used in this video is from the radio emissions captured by the Cassini space probe from Saturn.
Director
This video was made to talk about abuse in psychiatry, which I experienced in Montreal. However I chose to let others words explain my feelings on the topic. The visuals are recontextualized shots from The Miracle Worker, starring Patty Duke as Helen Keller. Patty Duke went on to develop bipolar disorder, like me. The main sound used in this video is from the radio emissions captured by the Cassini space probe from Saturn.
