Private Project

The Floating Man

As anti-trans and drag queen rhetoric rages in gender wars across the globe, Michael V. Smith's intimate documentary unpacks his journey as a radical drag performer and genderqueer.

Inspired by Agnès Varda, The Floating Man is a unique blend of DIY documentary, road trip, performance art, and videopoem. In this intimate self-portrait by a self-described sissy, The Floating Man sources Smith's provocative art practice, to examine a lifetime of untrue stories about his body.

A featured project includes Smith on a road trip on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, searching for famed Canadian singer Joni Mitchell... while dressed as Peanut the Clown.

A contemporary thread sees Smith's body 'erased,' dressed in a black body suit, in an attempt to eliminate all gender signals, asking us, How do we read a body? What does a particular shape tell us about the world? How much do we not realize we assume, often wrongly, about a person we see on the street? How might we assume less?

The Floating Man is an uplifting and timely film about gender fluidity and the power of art to transform a life.

  • Michael V Smith
    Director
    The Hook Up (NFB), Wolf Lake, Beast, Pink, Two Peanuts, Body Cake Lake, I Love My Friend, Invitation, Femme, Butch, Girl on Girl (as part of the Miss Nomer Collective)
  • Michael V Smith
    Writer
    Invitation, Beast, Pink, Femme, Butch, Wolf Lake, The Hook Up (NFB)
  • Michael V Smith
    Producer
    Wolf Lake, Two Peanuts, Beast, Pink, Body Cake Lake, I Love My Friend, Invitation, Femme, Butch, Girl on Girl (as part of the Miss Nomer Collective)
  • John Greyson
    Key Cast
    Zero Patience, Lilies, Proteus, Fig Trees, Rex vs Singh
  • Sarah Hedar
    Editor
    Sgaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife), Last Stand to Nowhere, Now Is the Time, Dominant Chord, Fatherhood Dreams, The Last Bastard
  • Dave Chick
    Sound Design
    MisTik, Breakthrough, Bleed, Lauren in the Bathroom, Cheating Death, Once Upon a Time, Project Eugenics, Living life or Waiting to Die
  • Andrea Routley
    Story Consultant
  • Erin Scott
    Story Consultant
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Feature
  • Genres:
    Art film, videopoem, road movie, avant-garde, auteur
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 17 minutes 32 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 13, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    46,405 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Reeling International Film Festival
    Chicago
    United States
    September 26, 2023
    World Premiere
  • Cinema Diverse
    Palm Springs
    United States
    October 1, 2023
  • Three Dollar Bill: Seattle Queer Film Festival
    Seattle
    United States
  • Out On Screen
    Vancouver
    Canada
    October 22, 2023
    Canadian premiere
  • QDoc Portland queer documentary film festival
    Portland
    United States
    November 4, 2023
Director Biography - Michael V Smith

Michael V. Smith's films have played most notably at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the New York Video Festival, and the British Film Institute. Smith's shorts have also played in festivals around the world, in cities such as Milan, Dublin, Turin, London, New York, Toronto, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Glasgow, Lisbon, Beirut, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, SF, LA and Bombay, to name a few.

Smith has won a number of awards for both his short film work and his writing. His short I Dream a Queer Allegory, made with celebrated writer RM Vaughan before his death, won the Cadence Best Video by Poets Award in 2021. As a member of the Miss Nomer Collective, their genderqueer short film Girl on Girl won the Colin Campbell Award for Best Canadian Male Short and the Best Canadian Female Short Award at the Inside Out Festival in Toronto.

As a performer, Smith has played dozens of cabarets and festivals, including Toronto’s VideoFag, nGbK gallery in Berlin, Junge Triebe Festival in Bielefeld, Germany, the 2011 Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, the Entzaubert Festival in Berlin, Encuentro 2014 in Montreal, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and an intervention with the Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin.

Smith's novel, Cumberland (Cormorant Books, 2002), was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Smith has won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers and a Western Magazine Award for Fiction. His memoir, My Body Is Yours (Arsenal Pulp, 2015) was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.

Michael V. Smith is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC, where he teaches Creative Writing in the interdisciplinary department of Creative Studies. Smith is an MFA grad from UBC’s Creative Writing program (1998), supervised by celebrated Canadian screenwriter Peggy Thompson (Better Than Chocolate, The Lotus Eaters).

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Director Statement

After our final test screening, the audience leapt to their feet during the credits and... danced and clapped along to Rae Spoon's closing song, the gender anthem Do Whatever the Heck You Want. Their reaction took me completely by surprise. I wasn't expecting dancing. But I think we've made a movie as feel-good as it is nuanced and complex.

Pretty much every step in making The Floating Man has been delicious. I've been telling everyone I had the summer of my life editing this movie. The whole film was a joy to make, in no small part thanks to my excellent and wise editor Sarah Hedar (who cut The Edge of the Knife). And with special nods to Varda, and some practical advice from celebrated filmmaker John Greyson (who reveals a jaw-dropping coincidence in his cameo). I also owe celebrated Canadian documentarian Nettie Wild some thanks, first for appearing in the film, and then for her excellent feedback on our first draft.

The Floating Man came to me in a flash, watching an Agnès Varda film. Varda uses many of the same techniques that I have been employing across a variety of genres. Seeing many of her films in a row, I suddenly saw how my first failed feature-- a gay clown road movie on a hunt to find reclusive Canadian artist Joni Mitchell-- could be repurposed. Varda taught me a system for putting these strategies into place.

Audience members from that test screening have pulled me aside after to say how much they cried during my movie, or to admit they can't stop thinking about it, or say how much it made them reflect on the ways they've 'settled' for a lesser gender too, to get by, or to fit in. Their confessions have been a profound compliment--and a real reminder to me that being vulnerable and confessional in my art is still a powerful gift, and tool, for others.

At a time when countries are shifting to the right, where we see human rights for trans people (and drag performers) being squashed across the globe, this intimate film says there are many other ways to be gendered in the world than a simple binary. And all of them are way more fun.