Bruce LaBruce

Canadian gay cult figure, underground filmmaker, actor, photographer and writer. While still in his 20’s, Toronto-based Bruce LaBruce edited and produced "homo punk" fanzines and super-8 movies ("Boy/Girl," "I Know What It's Like To Be Dead," "Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy's Home Movies," "Slam!") which contributed to the launch of the so-called radical Homocore or Queercore movement in Canada and elsewhere.

In 1991 LaBruce released his first feature length film. Shot on super 8 and blown up to 16mm, "No Skin Off My Ass" - which explores the sordid relationship between a queeny hairdresser (played with little effort by LaBruce himself) and a mute, handsome young skinhead (played quasi-convincingly by his then-boyfriend Klaus Von Brucker) - went on to become a world-wide cult hit. His follow-up feature "Super 8 1/2" 1994 - shot in both super 8 and (mostly) 16mm - is a harrowing cautionary bio-pic about LaBruce's rocky rise to cult stardom. LaBruce plays an aging porn star/director whose career is on the skids as he is unable to cope with his new found fame. After meeting an underground lesbian film-maker, he consents

to appear in a documentary about his sordid life, only to realize that she is ultimately exploiting him to further her own career. "Super 8 1\2" went on to become a film festival circuit favorite, earning slots in such high-profile festivals as Sundance, London, Berlin, Dublin, Thessaloniki, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, Tokyo, etc.

LaBruce's "Hustler White," made in collaboration with L.A.-based photographer Rick Castro, was released in 1996. Co-starring supermodel Tony Ward (ex-consort of Madonna and Christina Applegate) and LaBruce himself, this 16mm feature premiered at Sundance and similarly went on to become a film festival and cult favorite.