NEW YORK (RNS) Among the 2 million Muslims who flock to Saudi Arabia each year for the hajj pilgrimage, Parvez Sharma’s journey stands out.

He filmed his 2011 trip despite strict prohibitions against camera use at holy sites in Mecca, and he’s openly gay, a crime punishable by death in the desert kingdom.

“Contemporary Islam is at war with itself, and I have fought hard to not be a casualty,” Sharma says in “A Sinner in Mecca,” which premiered to hundreds of viewers in New York City on Friday (Sept. 4).

Born in India and based in New York, Sharma, 41, has been documenting the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims for years. Since the 2007 release of his documentary “A Jihad for Love,” which chronicles the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in 12 countries, he’s been labeled an infidel in Saudi Arabia.

Sharma’s latest autobiographical documentary strives to highlight the complexities of his religion.

“I’m still a little shaken from it all,” said New York resident Mamta Prakash after watching the premiere at Cinema Village in the West Village. “It really brought across his strong faith and love for Islam and was extremely moving.”

The documentary opens with clips from Sharma’s marriage to his husband at City Hall in Manhattan. He grapples with his identity as a devout Muslim when many fellow Muslims condemn his wedding. He is faced with what he calls a crisis of faith.

“I need evidence that my faith is strong enough to survive this journey,” he says.

Equipped with an iPhone 4S and two small cameras, Sharma then takes viewers on one of the largest human pilgrimages in the world. “I was terrified, I was absolutely terrified,” Sharma said. “I even wrote my will before I left because I did not know if I would come back alive.”

In the film, Sharma comments on Mecca’s growing commercialization, calling it the “Mecca of capitalism.” After prayer rituals at a holy site, he finds himself in a crowded Starbucks at a huge adjoining shopping mall.

At one point, Sharma meets a Pakistani man who had come to Mecca to be forgiven for participating in an honor killing of his brother’s wife. In another scene, Sharma reveals his sexual orientation to an American pilgrim who asks, “Why would you want to be part of something that does not want to be part of you?”

“The film was a beautiful insight into a very personal account of a religious journey,” said Meenu Mahajan, a New York resident from India who watched the premiere. “I felt it was a privilege to observe this private, religious expedition.”

In the film, Sharma condemns the Saudi government’s strict interpretation of Islam, which he says promotes the dangerous ideology that produces groups such as the militant Islamic State. Sharma takes viewers to what he calls the “front line of Islam”: a growing dissonance between its peace-loving majority — who come to Saudi Arabia to complete the hajj, a once-in-a-lifetime religious obligation required of all able-bodied Muslims — and government-supported violent extremists.

Sharma’s conclusion in the film is complex, if not revelatory. The hajj teaches him to reconcile his sexuality and faith from within.

“It’s not about Islam accepting me,” Sharma says near the end. “It’s up to me, as a gay Muslim, to accept Islam.”

The film has met both acclaim and criticism.

“There is an enormous amount of debate and discussion about it,” Sharma said. “Scores of people have responded positively at festivals, and that has been heartening. But what has not been heartening is this enormous amount of hate mail and death threats that I seem to wake up to every day at this point. Being at the receiving end is really challenging. It’s very hard to not internalize what is coming your way.”

Sharma launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for his movie to be distributed to the broader Muslim world. It will open in Los Angeles later this month and will be available on iTunes by October. 

Meanwhile, he lives with his husband in New York and hopes his film helps broaden the conversation both within Islam and among its critics.

“There is this tendency to demonize anyone that is Muslim and to think that every Muslim susbscribes to a particular ideology of violence,” he said. “People like me try as hard as possible to educate non-Muslims.”

His film, he hopes, is an offering toward that end.

These stories are part of a series on the intersection of faith, ethnicity and sexuality, brought to you with support from the Arcus Foundation.

Also On HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In the late ‘90s, when Tara Ruby was in the U.S. Air Force, support for breastfeeding moms “wasn’t even an option or a consideration,” she said.

So when the mom, now a photographer, heard that a dedicated nursing room was being built in the Fort Bliss Army post in El Paso, Texas, she knew she had to do something to show her support.

“I thought it would be nice to have a uniformed soldier breastfeeding portrait to hang in the room,” Ruby, who is based in El Paso, told The Huffington Post in an email Sunday. She hoped that such a photograph would show military moms that they “can be amazing mothers and soldiers at the same time.”

Parnering with the Fort Bliss P3T program, a moms’ support group,  Ruby put out a call on Facebook to find nursing mothers willing to be photographed for the portrait.

In the end, ten women showed up for shoot, held last Thursday at the Army post. All of them came in full uniform, with their babies in tow.

According to CNN, the photo shoot was approved by the Fort Bliss Public Affairs and Garrison Command. 

In a touching message of appreciation to the nursing moms who participated in the shoot, Ruby wrote on Facebook:

Ladies, I can't begin to express how I felt during the session, and during the time I spent editing. I remember nursing my oldest in the shadows, hiding on toilets and where ever I could while in uniform. My second baby I was told to cover up, that no one wanted to see ‘that.’ I remember that breastfeeding wasn't cool or the norm.

 

And now look at the bunch of you. Active duty, serving our country, and being amazing mothers that provide the best possible for your babies. This photo will help many other young mothers, young soldiers make decisions for their families and even their careers. I am proud of each and every one of you for standing up for your rights.

The photograph of the moms has since gone viral on Facebook, racking up thousands of views.

According to Ruby, Facebook initially took the photo down from her wall after she posted it late Thursday night. After reposting it the following morning, however, she says the photo has remained on her page.

“It had simply disappeared from Facebook,” she told HuffPost. “I confirmed with others that I knew had shared it and it was missing from their pages as well… like it had never existed. So we just reposted and reposted again. It looks like it will stay this time!”

Facebook has not commented on the disappearance of the picture.  

Ruby says she hopes the photo will help give more visibility to military moms and offer encouragement to mothers everywhere.  

“Today I believe we made history. To my knowledge a group photo to show support of active duty military mommies nursing their little's has never been done,” wrote Ruby on Facebook. “Breastfeeding their babies doesn't make [women] less of a soldier, I believe it makes them a better one. Juggling the tasks and expectations of a soldier, plus providing for their own in the best way they possibly can, makes these ladies even stronger for it.”

“I am 100% for #normalizebreastfeeding,” she added. “How about you?”

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I first met Vivian O’Shaughnessy in the basement of Cornelia Street Café, a restaurant and performance space in Greenwich Village for musicians, poets, writers and other creative types. I waitress there on Sunday evenings and when Vivian walked in, I couldn’t help but take notice.

Vivian is an artist and a poet. Most recently, she taught herself how to handwrite braille. (She's not blind, just curious.) Not only did she learn how to write braille, she also figured out a way to braille her drawings and paintings.  

At age 78, Vivian is a charming combination of wisdom and exuberance that, as a 24-year-old, I found completely captivating. There are so many more complimentary things I could say about her, but to feel her warmth, you should really see for yourself. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A new exhibition featuring the work of celebrated nature photographer Frans Lanting aims to tell the natural history of Earth -- from the first stirrings of life to the incredible biodiversity seen on our planet today.

"My mission was to create images of nature -- from volcanoes to tree frogs -- that could evoke a sense of time and origins," Lanting said in a written statement. "I wanted to apply both new scientific ideas to my subjects and new photographic concepts to my images. My approach has been that of a storyteller who draws on characters for the sake of telling a larger tale."

The exhibition, entitled LIFE: A Journey Through Time, will be on display at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles from Oct. 24 to March 20.  

More than 70 images by Lanting will be featured. Scroll down for a sneak peek at six of the images. Enjoy!

How does the appreciation of nature and art makes us human? Check out the "Talk Nerdy To Me" episode below to find out.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Growing up, my mother referred to me as a destroyer. At any restaurant, I'd shred my paper napkin into smaller and smaller crumbled up bits, then meticulously arrange them into barely legible narratives and shapes, until, with an eye roll and a sigh, Mom would dispose of the minuscule garbage heap with a sweep of the hand. 

Destroyer maybe was the right word. But what about artist, mom? That irrational, directionless urge that leads hands to rip, mush, fold and scribble is also the impulse that drives us to create. And even if the result isn't a MoMA-worthy masterpiece, well, it could still be a MoNE-worthy one.  

For the uninitiated, MoNE, or the Museum of Nervous Energy, is a grassroots museum that aims to investigate that spontaneous spark of creativity. You know, the one that makes you draw little stars on your hand or even mash up your dinner remnants into a multicolored goop. The museum is founded upon the belief that such authentic creative acts are strangely beautiful in their own humble way, and thus worthy of preservation and exhibition. 

The museum is founded by artist Hai Knafo, a man who has, throughout his life, indulged the creative bug within. Working as a taxi driver in the 1970s and '80s, Hai would fold dollar bills while waiting for passengers at JFK. He wove the cash money into kaleidoscopic, symmetrical visions, resembling a bird's-eye view of a green, suburban village (if said bird was plummeting to Earth while spinning wildly in concentric circles). Hai's compulsory habit eventually yielded a series entitled "Money Works," which exhibited at a SoHo gallery in 1982.

After his time in the taxi business, Hai began working as an illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, where he remained for the next 30 years. While on the job, he'd hoard random objects and compile them into a tiny collection organized atop his filing cabinet. The collection was ruined after the attacks of Sept. 11, which damaged The Wall Street Journal office, ending Hai's dreams of building his own museum of found objects -- for a while, at least. 

Hai's daughter Hannah, a self-described "graduate student, aspiring psychologist, and artist's daughter," is bringing the now retired illustrator's vision to life. She's currently raising funds on Kickstarter to cohesively showcase the fruits of a lifetime of nervous creative energy. 

"The Museum of NervousEnergy began as an investigation of the spontaneous spark of creativity -- trying to get at the very root of this process," Hannah explained to The Huffington Post. "Two important factors advanced the MoNE project. The first was the iPhone, documenting those spontaneous acts of creativity in the moment, serving as a sort of visual diary, a recording of daily ideas.

The second factor was retirement. "When Hai retired, he felt like he could once again make the art that he really wanted to make, rather than the very specific kind of art that he made at [The Wall Street Journal]," Hannah continued. "He wanted to channel his creativity, and make things fast and freely. When he walked into an art store, planning on buying some new art materials for his creative endeavors, he was disturbed by the expense. He made a decision not to spend money on art materials, and this almost became an ideological pursuit. Hai's artistic goals in retirement have been to make art cheaply, spontaneously, creatively, freely, humorously and genuinely."

In one of Hai's images, a watermelon is shown cut into small cubes arranged in a geometric spiral, alternating smooth green and crunchy pink. In another, pills spill out of prescription bottles to form a pointillist warrior on horseback. In lieu of canvas and paint, clay or ink, Hai opts for rubber bands, plastic bags, tree branches and food scraps.

I'm particularly taken with "Fork Ballet," a series in which the narrow tikes on silver forks are bent and squished like the most limber of ballerinas.

The Museum of Nervous Energy is an ode to all the manic doodlers of the world, all the paper shredders and trash savers and choreographers of loose change. It's for those who play with their food like it's an instrument or photograph a plastic bag when it's pumped full of air like an iridescent ghost that reads "Thank You For Shopping." Right now, MoNE mostly features Hai's work -- and there's a lot of it -- but is currently accepting submissions to their "Acquisitions" department for future exhibitions. 

We're often told that good art, fine art, takes serious contemplation, masterful technique, loads of time and careful execution. Not to bash on a well-crafted masterpiece, but, for destroyers like myself, MoNE is a refreshing flip of the switch, privileging the small creative spurts as much as the major artistic undertakings. In Hannah's words: "We would like to communicate that fine art does not have to be extreme, elaborate, enormous, impressive and expensive. It can be meaningful, simple, humble, cheap, and strangely beautiful."

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How do you wish to be seen?

This is the question behind "The Portrait Project," an exhibition celebrating the strength and resilience of individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Organized by Art Start, an organization that uses creative expression as means of empowering marginalized communities, the photographic endeavor hopes to change the standard imagery associated with homeless individuals. 

For the project, 14 young participants shared their personal stories along with their future hopes and most imaginative dreams. Using video monitors and large-scale photomurals, the subjects then had the opportunity to experience their aspirations and immortalize them in a work of art. Photographers including Adrian Broom, Steve Giralt, Natalie Brasington and David Johnson turn their subject's ambitions into lived dioramas, transforming the models into scientists, pop stars, scuba divers, astronauts and artists. 

"At a time when NYC homelessness is at record highs, one of Art Start's missions is to start a dialogue about what it means to be seen," explained Johanna de los Santos, co-executive director for Art Start, in a statement. While the majority of visualizations depicting contemporary homelessness summon feelings of compassion, sympathy and frustration, Art Start hopes to shift the dialogue, celebrating the fortitude and enduring imagination of the pictured individuals, who refuse to let their circumstances define their identities. 

See the beautiful images below. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Three young women look skyward, happily. They’re wearing heavy headscarves, decked out in beaded necklaces and painted faces. The occasion? After nearly a year of traveling in search of water, they’re entering the end of the rainy season, a time for celebration among the Wodaabe people of Niger. The festival, called Gerewol, centers on a dance competition in which male participants aim to win the hearts of female onlookers. Once the music and dancing fizzles out, they return to their traditionally nomadic lifestyle until the next Gerewol.

When photographer Terri Gold, known for the infrared images she captures of tribal cultures, had the opportunity to travel to Niger during the celebration, she jumped at the chance. 

“I have always had a passion to visually capture the rituals that define our lives and to create images that explore our human connections as they are formed,” Gold told The Huffington Post. “I am inspired by the different ways people find meaning in their lives, and how an individual explores their existence through their traditions. I love festivals and celebrations of every kind, where people let go and are living in the moment, the unguarded moment.”

Gold acknowledges her place as an outsider looking into the worlds of tribal cultures. This viewpoint is clear in the aesthetic of her works; although she began casting her photos in otherworldly, two-tone hues, she now shoots in digital, converting her photos to infrared in post-production. 

“Working with infrared light adds an element of mystery, which suits the surreal sense of time when traveling to places where the customs of different millennia co-exist side by side,” Gold said. 

Ultimately, Gold hopes her work will remind viewers of the importance of diverse cultures and traditions, and of “the fragility of tribal cultures.” 

Lamenting the decline of nomadic cultures -- most recently Tibetans forced by the Chinese government to sell their herds and stake up permanently in bunkers -- Gold said, “Diversity is the greatest expression of our creativity.”

See more of her "Nomads in Niger" series here.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Toddlers.

They've been called a**holes, dictators and tiny drunk people. But mere words don't capture what it's really like to live with a toddler.

We asked the HuffPost Parents Facebook community to show us "one photo that totally sums up what it's like to parent a toddler" and received hundreds of chaos-filled responses. From food messes to public tantrums to potty training disasters, the pictures show why this phase is known as "the terrible twos" (or is it "the terrible threes" nowadays?) 

Here are 29 parents' photos and thoughts about life with toddlers.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Do you love art so much you wish you could just straddle the damn thing and zoom out the door? Normally, I'd advise you to steer clear of museums if that's the case. But in the very particular case of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), you'll be in paradise. 

The MIA has partnered with Handsome Cycles, along with creative agencies KNOCK, inc. and TREAT AND COMPANY, to create a series of bicycles inspired by artworks in the Institute's collection. Why? Because it's the MIA’s 100th Birthday, that's why! 

The first bike, inspired by Claude Monet's "Grainstack, Sun in the Mist," adapts Monet's delicate yet gritty pastel brushstrokes to the bike's exterior. "We wanted to let the paint speak for itself in this piece," a Handsome Cycles rep explained in a statement. "Our painter used multiple layers and a precision hand to execute the complicated finish of this bike. The rest of the bike is kept intentionally simplistic to highlight the complexity of the paint, while only adding elements that enhance its rural and natural feel."

And then there's the two-wheeler based on Frank Stella's 1969 "Tahkt-i-Sulayman, Variation II" -- the title is named after an ancient shrine in West Azerbaijan, Iran. For the uninitiated, most of Stella's works in his "Protractor" series are named after a circular Middle Eastern city or architectural site the artist traveled to in the '60s. Of the work, Stella said: "My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object ... You can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see."

The final bike in the collaboration captures the je ne sais quoi of the 1948 Tatra T87 Four-Door Sedan, also in the MIA's collection. The car's smooth curves and polished exterior are adapted to fit its bike's frame. 

Paging all bike nerds, art nerds, and vintage car nerds, I guess! Get yourselves over to the MIA stat, where you can take the carefully painted pedal to the metal. Just joking, you can't ride them -- they're art bikes, after all. See some close-up shots below and keep reading for a behind-the-scenes video of the whole process. 

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

One brightly colored sand shovel. One plastic ring from a packaged drink. One foam flip-flop. One discarded water bottle. 

Each object seems so small in comparison to the boundless ocean, no individual bit of our garbage a threat to the sea and the creatures that live within it. It's easy to ignore that billions of humans are contributing their own bits of trash to a waste problem that threatens the stability of ocean life.

In a traveling exhibit, "Gyre: The Plastic Ocean," organized by Anchorage Museum and now on display at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in Los Angeles, artists take the seemingly petty individual sin of littering and shine a light on the collective cost: mountains of abandoned flip-flops, handfuls of plastic rings, structures built of bottles found washed ashore. 

"These artworks are testaments to the negative impact of our consumptive practices and reminders of the ongoing damage we subject our natural environment to," curator Ariadni Liokatis told The Huffington Post via email. 

The pieces stand on their own and work powerfully together as art, but Liokatis also pointed out that "as a university museum, we bring arts, sciences and other disciplines together." The strength of the art hopefully serves to "raise awareness to a very important and increasingly critical subject matter, that is plastic pollution in our oceans," she said.

The striking beauty of these pieces, which mostly feature cleaned, artfully arranged waste, can be unsettling at times, like realizing you're eagerly enjoying a thriller novel about real, horrific murders. What are the implications of using the sanitizing effect of aesthetic appeal to draw attention to a problem that should horrify us?

Liokatis countered this question with an uncomfortable reality: "The visually pleasing aspect of these artworks [...] effectively and creatively captures the public’s attention, and hopefully will elicit the public’s engagement." We're far less likely to stare in awe at a sludgy, repulsive piece of art, but the bait of a mesmerizing image constructed solely of ocean trash lures us in. 

In conjunction with the exhibit, Fisher is also displaying Cynthia Minet's "Beasts of Burden," an ecologically minded installation drawn from her series "Unsustainable Creatures." Minet's "Pack Dogs" is on show as part of "Gyre."

 "Gyre: The Plastic Ocean" is on display at the USC Fisher Museum of Art from Sept. 2 to Nov. 21, 2015.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

While listening to the radio might seem archaic, podcasts have taken over as one of the most exciting, creative and, dare we say, chic forms of communication.

With that said, it was only a matter of time before Vogue decided to grace the airwaves with its distinctively stylish presence. Today marks the launch of the publication's first-ever podcast.

The task of chatting with fashion's biggest designers and Hollywood's brightest stars has been given to Vogue's contributing editor, André Leon Talley. 

"I've been a longtime storyteller at Vogue and it's just another format for telling stories -- as at Vogue, we love to tell the story of style, fashion, and what is absolutely a part of the culture at the moment," Talley told The Huffington Post.

The inaugural episode features none other than Vogue's legendary editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who waxes poetic about Givenchy's first New York Fashion Week show, Beyoncé, and who also gives her opinion on Kanye West's alleged quest for the presidency.

"We are anticipating wonderful, informal, and relaxed conversations," Talley explained. "We are looking forward to this as an interesting format for showcasing people that we celebrate, who are accomplished -- home, food, style, fashion, personality, celebrities -- we are open for every single thing."

So who is on Talley's dream guest list? 

"My dream guest would be Rihanna," Talley told HuffPost. "And another dream guest would be Kanye West. He's very much a prolific talker -- he tells a story if you give him the format. So I imagine it would be a very long marathon of a podcast."

But A-list celebs won't be the only ones filling Vogue's podcast airwaves. Talley is also interested in speaking to luminaries like Margo Jefferson, the author of "Negroland" -- a book that was recently gifted to him by Anna Wintour. 

Sounds like perfection. 

 Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

We tend to remember a film's showiest performance. Often, that center of attraction takes on the physicality of an ill character or the malevolence of a corrupt one. In the former camp, think Tom Hanks battling AIDS in "Philadelphia," Meryl Streep succumbing to cancer in "One True Thing" or Eddie Redmayne contorting his physique as ALS takes over Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything." All three earned Oscar nominations, because they are accomplished roles and because it is easy to appreciate an actor who effectively captures the outsize despair of a decaying body. The second camp -- skillful portrayals of sinister lowlives -- includes Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs" and Louise Fletcher in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," both among cinema's most memorable work.  

The ongoing Toronto Film Festival has several of these emotive performances among its roster: Julianne Moore wheezes her way through lung cancer in the gay-rights drama "Freeheld," a cancer-stricken Toni Collette must bid her best friend farewell in the weepy girl-power ode "Miss You Already," Johnny Depp disappears behind the steely blue eyes of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger in "Black Mass," and Eddie Redmayne -- an equally physical performance, despite no illness or corruption on display -- transitions to a proper identity in the lush "Danish Girl." These are remarkable, lived-in performances, palpable and at times difficult to witness. All of them, especially Redmayne and Depp, will see Oscar buzz in the coming months. 

But I'm more interested in talking about the people who surround these performances. In a sense, they have a far more difficult job. Each of these movies casts an onscreen companion who must balance the emotional weight of such visceral struggles. Ellen Page contends with her partner's death in "Freeheld," Drew Barrymore prepares for the absence of her lifelong friend in "Miss You Already," Joel Edgerton tenderizes the crookedness stamped all over "Black Mass" as a racketeering FBI informant, and Alicia Vikander forms the other half of the moving romance that becomes the fortitude of "The Danish Girl." Their characters' trajectories are less obvious, which means their performances don't feel like the films' centerpieces. But they very much are, just like Jodie Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs" and Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything." (For other examples out of Toronto, see Joan Allen in "Room," Jessica Chastain in "The Martian" and Jane Fonda in "Youth.")

Before the first frames of these films even flashed onscreen, Toronto audiences had an inherent sense of what to feel. Most anyone would when it comes to cancer sufferers, a notorious mobster and a victimized transgender woman. It's their screen partners, then, who must ground the stories. They take us on the true emotional journeys, and in that regard, they are proxies for the audience. It may not be their tale, per se, but they have to bring depth to what would otherwise be glaring character arcs. That's a tough gig, and Page, Barrymore, Edgerton and Vikander are worthy of their paychecks. 

When the aforementioned movies open over the next couple of months, prepare to be wowed by the physical and emotional transformations of their leads. But divorce yourself, at least momentarily, from the showiness of such roles and you'll find that the true heft belongs to the players whose work doesn't scream "Oscar buzz" quite as loudly. They, too, are some of the year's best. 

For continuous updates from the Toronto Film Festival, follow Matthew Jacobs and Erin Whitney on Twitter.

Also on HuffPost:

For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

You know Taylor Swift has truly made it as an icon when she is a subject of a corn maze.

Summers Farm in Frederick, Maryland, recently made the maize maze showing the singer and it's an honor she won't be able to shake off.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Legos are more than just a toy. They're a lifestyle. Need more excuses to start building? We got you.

1. Phone dock

2. Paper plane launcher

(Play to this music.) 

3. Loom machine

4. Bling

5. Dice roller

6. Gin bottle

7. Ice

8. Turntable

9. Pour over coffee stand

10. Pancake maker

11. Car

12. Wheelchair

 13. Prosthetic leg(o)

14. Dog house

15. Couch

16. Room divider

17. An entire bedroom

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A photo of an emaciated polar bear is stirring a debate about the consequences of climate change. 

Photographer Kerstin Langenberger of Arctic Dreams photography shared a photo on her Facebook page last month of a severely thin polar bear with protruding bones, taken in the Arctic Ocean's Svalbard region. Langenberger noted how she has noticed the summers getting warmer, the ice melting and more bears spending time on land. 

"I realized that the fat bears are nearly exclusively males which stay on the pack ice all year long," she wrote. "The females, on the other hand, which den on land to give birth to their young, are often slim. With the pack ice retreating further and further north every year, they tend to be stuck on land where there's not much food."

"Only [a] few times I have seen beautifully fat mothers with beautifully fat young," she added. "Many times I have seen horribly thin bears, and those were exclusively females -- like this one here. A mere skeleton, hurt on her front leg, possibly by a desperate attempt to hunt a walrus while she was stuck on land."

Langenberger said that, although some reports indicate Svalbard bear populations are rising, she has seen several dead bears. While life in the Arctic is difficult for multiple species, experts say the shocking condition of the bear photographed by Langenberger may very well be attributed to recent climate change. 

"[R]eports and images of thin or dead adult bears from the Barents Sea region of late are concerning and are also consistent with what we expect to see in a warming Arctic," Geoff York, senior director of conservation at Polar Bears International, told The Huffington Post in an email. "Loss of sea ice is largest in the Barents Sea region, where the summer ice free period is now 20 weeks longer than when records began in 1979." 

The environment of the region in 2015 stands in stark contrast to the environment 30 years ago. 

"As someone who spent 14 consecutive seasons out on the sea ice, and who has focused on Arctic work for nearly 20 years now, it was rare to see reports of dead bears in the wild in the '80s and '90s," he added. "During these stable periods of sea ice, if they survived the first few years, adult polar bears were deemed nearly immortal.  That seems to be changing in some regions and merits close monitoring."

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Hundreds of people packed an open, grassy space in Brooklyn, New York over the weekend for an event that has become synonymous with queer performance culture in this part of the metropolis: Bushwig.

The annual festival of drag, music and love celebrated its fourth run from September 13 - 15, moving from the neighborhood punk staple venue known as Secret Project Robot to a massive outdoor venue called the Onderdonk House. 

Despite the gloomy weather, people came out in droves to witness this incredible cultural moment for so many of the queer artists navigating Northern Brooklyn. The two-day festival showcased over 150 performers from around the world -- a far departure from the 30 performers featured in the first Bushwig in 2012.

One of the most significant moments came early on from drag icon Lady Bunny, founder of the legendary Wigstock festival that has shaped and informed the development of Bushwig.

While on stage, Bunny gave a Statue of Liberty-style torch to Horrorchata, co-founder of Bushwig, alongside Babes Trust, in a symbolic gesture of "passing on the torch" from Wigstock to Bushwig.

She joked that the prop still had the tag from Halloween mega-store Abracadabra.

Among those who attended the event, the common consensus seemed to be that 2015 proved to be the most successful Bushwig yet. 

"In New York it is the ultimate challenge to balance making your own art as well as enjoying all of your peers' work in dance, theater, drag, music and beyond, and Bushwig comes in and gathers them all in one place and all in one weekend," 2015 Brooklyn Nightlife Drag Queen of the Year Untitled Queen told The Huffington Post. "It is so beautiful to see all the smiling faces of your friends as they prepare to perform, look through a rack of Alotta McGriddles' gems, trip over Lady Simon tied to a tree, and be photo bombed by Horrorchata's Marcos wig all on a gorgeous open lawn reminiscent of a mini-golf course. Although Bushwig, now in it's fourth incarnation, has grown in its roster and venue size, it still retains all the magic of being homegrown, DIY, and Brooklyn-made. I was just a drag baby when Bushwig started, and I remember not even realizing what I was a part of in the moment -- which I think is part of its spell."

Check out photos from the 2015 Bushwig festival below courtesy of photographer Santiago Felipe.

Congrats, Horrorchata and Babes!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

It turns out that when handmade goods get popular, it can be difficult to keep them strictly handmade. So the artisanal goods marketplace Etsy finds itself doing the unthinkable: helping its most popular sellers find manufacturers.

Etsy -- which sells everything from dreamcatcher-shaped nipple rings to kitchen spoons with an emoji carved into them -- announced Monday that it will start matching popular sellers with approved manufacturers to help them scale their businesses. Eventually the company will take a commission for its trouble.

The move pushes the site even further away from the days when it could guarantee that the items it listed were either vintage (which Etsy defines as more than 20 years old) or handmade by individual sellers. 

The question of scale has become a huge issue as the company has grown, according to The New York Times. “One thing we heard over and over again was a seller who gets a lot of traction but they realize, ‘Oh, my gosh, how I make this doesn’t work anymore,’ ” Amanda Peyton, who manages software development for the new Etsy Manufacturing platform, told the Times.

“But the process of searching for a manufacturer can be labyrinthine, like trying to find a random person on the Internet,” Peyton also said. “It’s particularly difficult for Etsy sellers because they might want someone who works with a particular kind of ink within a 600-mile radius and is willing to meet with you personally and work with small runs.”

Etsy began allowing sellers to work with manufacturers on a limited basis in late 2013. The move created a huge controversy among its user base.

While Etsy's policy for sellers says "everything listed for sale on Etsy must be handmade, vintage, or a craft supply," it also specifies that the definition of handmade doesn't actually mean "made by hand." Instead, it defines "handmade" products as "items that are made by you, the seller, or are designed by you and made with the help of an approved outside manufacturer who complies with our ethical manufacturing policies [emphasis ours]." 

The company on Monday released a statement which says it will "be reviewing and approving manufacturer applications on an individual basis according to a number of criteria, such as their commitment to transparency, the degree to which they allow subcontracting, and their size."

According to the statement, it has approved 5,000 sellers to use outside manufacturing in the last two years.

Ultimately, it seems that Etsy has shifted from being about making things by hand to ensuring that sellers 1) create their own design ideas, 2) have a good idea of how their work is being manufactured once it is outsourced, 3) are working with manufacturers that have sustainable production practices and humane working conditions for their workers. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The man with the world's longest tongue is doing what he was born to do: Paint a beaver with his tongue.

Nick Stoeberl, 26, currently holds the Guinness World Record for world's longest tongue -- a whopping 3.97 inches from tip to closed lip.

That honor might be enough for some people, but Stoeberl feels a giant tongue is nothing if not used for the betterment of humanity.

"It's a gift," he told HuffPost. "I have to use it."

So Stoeberl has started using his licker as a paint brush, making portraits and art works by dipping his tongue in acrylic paint and then onto canvas.

Stoeberl has done numerous tongue paintings including one of talk show host Steve Harvey, but is proudest of his most recent work: A giant beaver.

"This painting definitely appeals to my taste," he said. "I'm fascinated by beavers."

Stoeberl, who also works as a sharp-tongued standup comedian, was inspired to become a tongue painter two years ago after seeing the work of a tongue painter in India.

"However, when I heard him talk about the nausea he experiences putting the paint in his mouth, I realized I needed to cover my tongue with Saran Wrap first," he said.

It took Stoeberl about six hours to complete the beaver painting.

"The area surrounding the beaver was easier to lick than the beaver itself," he said.

Stoeberl's work with his tongue is more of a novelty than anything else, but the beaver portrait has earned him a spot in the record books.

RecordSetter.com, a website that specializes in wacky records said Stoeberl's beaver painting, which measures 36 inches by 24 inches is the Largest Painting Of A Beaver Painted Using Tongue.

Stoeberl plans to focus his tongue and his creativity toward doing works inspired by Andy Warhol, but is also considering doing a whole series of paintings focused on his favorite animal: the beaver.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

When Julia Kozerski lost half her body weight while a photography student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, dropping from 338 pounds to 178 pounds, she turned the camera on herself.

"It didn't start as a 'project' per se," she told The Huffington Post. Instead, Kozerski was trying to capture for herself the physical and mental struggles tied with body image and weight loss. Her nude self-portraits include close-up shots of Kozerski's post-weight loss skin and stretch marks, as well of a portrait of the artist in her wedding dress, now several sizes too big.

"I was at nearly 100 pounds lost before I let another person see my images and, even then, I released them only to my husband and my fellow classmates," she said. "Eventually I realized that the story I was telling had a greater, more universal message and I decided that the photographs were best shown openly in public."

The strikingly candid photo series, entitled "Half," explores Kozerski's battles with food, self-control, and self-image, she wrote on her website. The series gave Kozerski a new outlook on beauty, the media's treatment of weight loss and a refreshing perspective on the idea of "normal." As she wrote in her artist statement for Half:

While I genuinely believed that my hard work and dedication would transform me into that 'perfect' person of my dreams, the reality of what has resulted is quite the opposite. My experience contradicts what the media tends to portray. While it is easy to celebrate and appreciate the dramatic physical results of such an endeavor, underneath the layers of clothing and behind closed doors, quite a different reality exists.  

Kozerski said the project will be a success if other people see her photographs and realize that they are not alone in their body image struggles. 

"We are all 'flawed' in some way," she said. "But if you know that you are not alone and that there is no 'normal' -- no 'right' or 'wrong' -- you can live openly and freely."

Amen to that. 

See Kozerski's photo series, Half, below and on her website: 

Do you have your own story about the realities of body image after weight loss that you want to share? What do you wish people knew about your "before and after?" Email success.stories@huffingtonpost.com.

Also on HuffPost:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.