Markus Harwood-Jones’ journey to learn about his identity was shown as part of the Trans* Remembrance Week events

Filmmaker Markus Harwood-Jones created the documentary Mosaic to learn more about the
Trans community and his own identity. Photo provided.

As a documentary and a dialogue, the two-part film Mosaic explores the concepts of gender, community, and survival.

“It was important for me to interrupt cisgender dominance in media and create something by and for Trans people,” explains Markus Harwood-Jones, about the motivations behind making his film Mosaic.

The first part of the film was screened at George Brown College at St. James campus, by the Community Action Centre as one of several Trans* remembrance week events. The second part will be shown at the college sometime in 2015.

Mosaic is a work several years in the making that documents Harwood-Jones’ journey across Canada and the United States, a trip he embarked on to learn more about the Trans community and his own identity.

Though the footage for Mosaic was filmed during this trip, it was not until Harwood-Jones received a grant from Ryerson University that he was able to refine this raw footage into a documentary.

Essential to this process was his editor and co-producer, Shane Camastro who is a Toronto-born educator, activist and multimedia artist. Like Harwood-Jones, Camastro is “thrilled to share Mosaic with others.”

Active members of the queer and trans community, Camastro and Harwood-Jones share a commitment to anti-oppressive practice and the entire film has been subtitled in English making the documentary accessible to Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing viewers.

Both producers attended the screening at the college, selling copies of the film as well as specially designed buttons celebrating various aspects of the trans* community.

Talking before the screening, Camastro and Harwood-Jones also touched on future screenings of the film, which they plan to submit to Inside Out, the Toronto LGBT film festival.