Mirha-Soleil Ross

In 2001, transsexual activist, sex worker, and performance artist Mirha-Soleil Ross was elected Grand Marshall for Toronto's annual LGBT Pride Parade. This was done in recognition of her hard work on behalf of the transsexual, transgender, and sex worker communities. Dressed as the Lady of the Beasts, she emerged from the deep urban woods with her pack of coyotes to lead a performance celebrating the actions and victories of the underground Animal Liberation Front and to show support for all the courageous activists who every year risk their freedom to liberate animals from places of abuse and exploitation.

From May 2001 to February 2002, transsexual performance artist Mirha-Soleil Ross appeared pregnant every time she was in public. This video features Mirha-Soleil performing pregnancy by the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and an audio recording of her mother speaking about the ups and downs of having a baby. Created as a part of Mirha-Soleil Ross' performance art cycle: The Pregnancy Project. The Pregnancy Project explores some transsexual women's relationship to the personal and institutional aspects of motherhood and hopes to foster community discussion around controversial reproductive technologies.

What happens when two trans women get sick of non-transsexuals' uninformed representation of their sexualities and their lives? They grab their 8 millimeter home video camera, their last 200 bucks, and come up with an uncompromising in-your-face flick about their shitty relationships with gay men and their unabashed attraction to other transsexual women.

A Czech woman speaks about her exile in Canada and about her sense of loss as it relates to language and her relationship with her children.

A cyberspace encounter turns into a trans/polysexual vegan-docu-porno featuring urban veggie lovers speaking out on dating, intimacy and sex in a meat-centered culture.

Every year, l'Association des Transsexuels-les du Québec organizes, in collaboration with Café Cléopatre, an evening of transsexual pride. Entitled "Journée Internationale de la Transsexualité," the event is an opportunity for several generations of transsexual women to get together, recognize the involvement of many in their community and pay tribute to individuals who figure importantly in their history.

In May 2005, over 200 sex workers and activists from around the world gathered in Montréal to celebrate the global sex workers' rights movement and the 10th anniversary of Stella. Entitled FORUM XXX, the four day event delivered on its promise for an exhilarating and politically inspiring extravaganza. It provided sex workers with an opportunity to get together and raise the power that's needed to fight for sex workers' rights and the decriminalization of prostitution on a global scale. Live eXXXpressions is a 15 minute film that reflects on the sex workers rights movement. It provides a glimpse into the Forum XXX, where sex workers' discussions, demands, and struggles for human rights took centre stage.

A documentary based on first-person Toronto performance show (7 monologues) dealing with prostitution and anti-prostitution. A tour de force by Canada’s most famous transsexual sexworker animal-rights activist performance artist, Yapping is hilarious and moving --half autobiographical, half agitprop satire, fully unforgettable.

A poetic meditation on the beauty, perils and power of sexuality in a transsexual woman's body.

Spend an evening at Madame Lauraine's transsexual whorehouse where you can either eat in or take out!

Legendary Warwick Hotel Superstar BRANDEE —aka Al Lana Lamarre— passed away during her sleep on April 7th, 2007. She was 80 years old and some dust... A life-long entertainer, BRANDEE was appreciated and loved by family, friends and fans alike. This brief vignette featuring Brandee and her friend Georgie was recorded by Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky on the December 17th, 2006.

Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transsexual prostitute who has practiced unsafe sex in her personal and professional life. In this performance, she uses video, images, music, text, and one on one contact with members of the audience to contrast the various dynamics involved and the interests at stake in this debate.

An in your face response to society's fascination and repulsion for transsexual genitals, bodies, and sexualities.

A conversation with Toronto community activist and female-to-male transsexual Peter Dunnigan. He speaks openly about addiction, recovery, sexuality, and life as a gender outcast. More than an educational tool for a general audience, this video is a call for transsexuals, both female-to-males and male-to-females, to unite, heal, and resist.

Three video-diary segments in which a transsexual prostitute recounts different circumstances that lead her to practice unsafe sex with clients.

LULLABY was created by Mirha-Soleil Ross for the SEXIN' CHANGE Conference in Toronto, October 2001, as part of her 9 month long performance art PREGNANCY PROJECT. The PREGNANCY PROJECT explores transsexual women's relationship to the personal and institutional aspects of motherhood and hopes to foster community discussion about the ethical and political implications of "controversial" reproductive technologies such as surrogacy, female reproductive organ transplant, and cloning. LULLABY was presented within an installation that invited the conference participants to give metaphorical ovum and spermatozoan donations. LULLABY sings to the experience of being a barren or wombless woman in a culture that assigns to females who can bear children particular qualities and a specific status within the cosmological order.

A candid home video capturing a transgender sex worker in a very sticky situation.

A video recording of a 1999 performance in which a transsexual prostitute shares work-related anecdotes spiced-up with political comments about her butthole.

Besmette Stad features works by video-guerrillero Paul Garrin, choreographer Meg Stuart, filmmaker Pascal Baes, performance artist Alison Murray, and participants of a filmmakers’ workshop in Molenbeek, initiated by Francisca Lambrechts. Upon invitation by the Belgian TV program Ziggurat, Johan Grimonprez portrays the urban landscape of Brussels as a 'state of mind'. This short film zooms in on the interaction between film, performance, dance and literature during the festival Besmette Stad |The Infected City, organized by the Beursschouwburg.