Following the death of the family patriarch, a box of newly procured family documents reveals writer-filmmaker Chase Joynt's previously unknown connection to Canadian media maverick Marshall McLuhan. Vantage Points takes up the surprising appearance of McLuhan in Joynt's family archive as a way to think about legacies of childhood sexual abuse and how we might process and represent them.

To do so, Joynt stages a series of vignettes that place memoir in the context of other sources, media, and stories to create a tapestry — a montage-like experience of reading with surprising and revealing juxtapositions.

Joynt writes about difficult pasts and connects them to contemporary politics and ways of being, employing McLuhan's seminal Understanding Media as an inciting framework. Vantage Points is a kaleidoscopic reckoning with the impact of media and masculinity on the stories we tell about ourselves and our families, a unique and highly visual approach to trans life writing, and an experimental move between gender and genre.

With black-and-white illustrations. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)

Chase Joynt is a Canadian director and writer. His most recent film, Framing Agnes, won the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. His book You Only Live Twice, co-written with Mike Hoolboom was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.