Sook-Yin Lee

In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.

Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an 'internationally ignored' but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a 'beautiful gender of one'.

A trans man returns to his hometown for the first time in years. On his journey, he confronts his relationship with his family, reunites with a first love, and discovers a newfound confidence in himself.

Exploring the complex bond between two half brothers — one Indigenous, one white — traveling from the present in isolated Shamattawa to bustling 1980s Toronto.

CIA operative Nelson Crowe is tasked with a deadly assignment: infiltrate a highly secret industrial espionage firm. Once inside, he teams with Margaret Wells, a master spy and seductive manipulator, in a plot to overthrow the organization's sinister president, which leads them into a darkly mysterious web of intrigue -- and shocking murder!

Various lives intersect over the course of 48 hours in Canada's largest and most culturally diverse city.

Miriam Gordon lives in a fog of grief while working in a downtown public library branch. When a burgeoning love affair coincides with her receiving a series of oddly threatening letters, Miriam's sheltered existence is cracked open.

A three-paneled look at the worldwide AIDS crisis: in Montreal, a porn actor schemes to pass his mandatory blood test; a young nun makes a personal sacrifice for the benefit of a South African village; in rural China, a black market operative posing as a government-sanctioned blood drawer jeopardizes an entire village's safety

Suspense tale -- a pilot to a prospective series -- involving a criminal psychologist, struggling to rebuild his life after his wife is brutally murdered by a patient, and a lady lawyer who enlists his help in solving a baffling crime.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton was bilingual, glib, annoying, full of energy and always in front to the media. Growing up in a political family, Layton was a Toronto city councilor for 17 years and was head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for a year. He became leader of the federal NDP in 2003 and the party became the Official Opposition for the first time in history. Then his health problems began.

Angelina is a shy and whimsical Italian waitress who has moved from Italy to Canada to fulfill a family vow by marrying a man she's not in love with. Angelina settles into a neighborhood in Toronto's Little Italy longing for true love. Mike is a jaded and cynical copywriter for romance novels but has lost his faith in romantic love. In the days leading up to Valentine's Day, an enigmatic and amorous couple named Il Magnifico and Mrs. Jones set the whole neighborhood ablaze with romantic passion. While everyone seems to be falling under the spell of Cupid's arrows, Angelina and Mike meet and just might find the true love that they've been searching for.

Two cops try to solve the murder of a former prostitute while fighting for their jobs in a crime-ridden precinct of a Northwestern city.

Alessa Woo (Lee) is an ambitious art dealer who meets her match in gifted painter Ben Crowchild (Beach) in this romantic comedy.

A look at the unusual process used in the making of the film Shortbus (2006) featuring interviews, behind the scenes footage and clips from the feature film. Director John Cameron Mitchell starts with the concept of using real sex in a film with a positive message. The cast of unknowns is selected from homemade audition tapes and then a callback audition workshop. More acting workshops are used to develop the characters and script. The project overcomes a number of obstacles and the rest of the film's development is followed up until its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

During the rise of the music video era in the 80s, Canada launched "MuchMusic", a low budget TV network that revolutionized how the world's biggest stars connected with their fans and influenced the culture for the next three decades.

REST AND RELAX is a film oddity about the anxieties of our time made by and starring artist/musicians Sook-Yin Lee and Dylan Gamble. Four stories explore life in the 21st century while surviving capitalism, sickness, and the internet.

Undeniably one of the most important and influential gay music acts in the last twenty years, Pansy Division pioneered the "queercore" genre long before other gay musicians had the confidence to come out of the closet, and without major record label support or mainstream radio airplay. Using original and archive footage and covering over fifteen years as a group, Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band is a fast-paced, intimate and humorous account of one of rock's most fearless acts. From their first days in San Francisco's underground music scene to a full-fledged stadium tour with Green Day and beyond, founding members Jon Ginoli and Chris Freeman overcome increasingly difficult line-up changes, prejudice and near-poverty to keep the band together and create music that has truly made a difference.

A documentary discussing the legacy and impact of the famous Crocks N Rolls bar, a music club in Thunder Bay, Ontario that featured many prominent artists throughout the 1980s. Numerous interviewees are profiled, as is the club's legendary founder and owner Frank Loffredo.

On the brink of getting fired from her restaurant by new owners, visionary chef and master fermenter Marielle Lau (Sook-Yin Lee) develops an incendiary new dish with a bewitching ingredient she’s convinced will save her career.

WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS An experimental short directed by Sook-Yin Lee Conceived by JOOJ (Lee & Adam Litovitz) Made from the raw footage of JOOJ's 'Shoulders and Whispers' music video, directed by Brandon Cronenberg & filmed by Karim Hussain, CSC. WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS appropriates and reworks the raw footage of JOOJ's 'Shoulders and Whispers' music video. The video's images are rendered voiceless, with figures adrift in suspended animation for a twenty-six minute hypno-poetic reconstruction that draws upon unused images from the original music video. The initial video, 'Shoulders and Whispers,' is a black-and-white three-minute pop-song artifact designed to grab attention with each shot a fixed duration with a slow left-to-right pan. No shot is ever repeated. It has a forward momentum, unfolding new dynamics and imagery; conversely, WHISPERS AND SHOULDERS embraces repetitiveness in richly-saturated colour.

In his basement in San Francisco, boy-genius Quinn Mallory unlocks the doorway to an infinite number of Earths. During a test run, Quinn invites co-worker Wade Welles and his teacher Professor Maximillian Arturo to see his new invention. But an increase in power and an early departure leave all three, plus a washed-up soul singer named Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown, lost in a parallel world. Now they must "slide" from world to world, not only adapting to their changing surroundings, but also trying to get back to their world. Will they ever make it home?