Thirza Cuthand


Thirza Cuthand is a filmmaker, artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree and Scottish and Irish descent. Born in 1978 in Regina, Saskatchewan, she grew up in Saskatoon. She majored in film and video studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver.
In 1995, a queer film festival and workshop that came to Saskatoon prompted her to start making her own films. The workshop led her first short video, Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory, made when she was sixteen and acclaimed at film festivals around the world.
Cuthand currently resides in Toronto, continuing to work on short films. Many of these works deconstruct stereotypes of sexuality, mental health, youth, love, relationships and race, on a low or no-budget style. She has self-funded many of her own projects. Cuthand also works as a curator and has organized programs for ImageNation, Video Out, Paved Art and Queer City Cinema.
Cuthand's work has been presented at numerous festivals and exhibitions including the Walker Art Centre, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Optic Nerve The Women's Television Network, MIX NY, the Walter Phillips Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery, MIX Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity, New York Exposition of Short Film and Video, 9e Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement and the 70th Berlin International Film Festival where NDN Survival Trilogy her witty, personal short films about extraction capitalism in Canada were screened at the Canadian Embassy.
She appeared in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, despite her stated disappointment in the role of Whitney Museum vice chair Warren Kanders's implication in war profiteering.