Petra Totten

Petra Totten

First Name: 
Petra
Last Name: 
Totten
Title: 
PhD Student
Biography : 

Petra Totten is a Vanier Scholar working in film and video currently based in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has won awards at the Emmys and InsideOut, and has been screened across Europe, Asia, and North America. Her research-creation dissertation seeks to find new pathways between  nonfiction film theory and trans+ studies in order to reinvigorate the formal tactics used to tell trans+ stories.

Petra’s work is exploratory in nature, seeking to highlight the beauty in lived experience; utilizing the essay film form and research-creation methodologies to collaborate in ways grounded in care and mutual respect. Her research interests include nonfiction film, trans* studies, and how the two connect and inform one another, and are especially focused on moving beyond the benchmarks of visibility and representation to a more holistic view of marginalized experience. Trans+ peoples' autonomy is systematically being taken away across Canada, thanks in part to historic notions of respectability, which Petra's work repeatedly rejects in order to change the material well being of trans+ communities.

Selected Work

Education: 
MFA, Toronto Metropolitan University
BA, Brigham Young University

People Type:

Program:

Cohort:

Dissertation Title: 
Experiential Poesis: A Research-Creation Project Uncovering New Ways of Creating Trans*-Focused Nonfiction Cinema
Dissertation Supervisors: 
Angelica Fenner
Dana Seitler