“I Operate From a Trans Lens, or Frame, as Though It Is the Only Choice Available”: Jules Rosskam on Desire Lines

For me, watching Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, which won this year’s Sundance Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition, was a cinematic breath of fresh air. The experimental feature combines no holds barred interviews with transmen (of all shapes and colors) who are attracted to men, with a fictional storyline involving a real archive (one that includes shamefully buried history, like the story of author/ activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay). The result is a riveting look back in time, and to the present and possible future, to reveal how, in the words of the director, “gender and sexuality animate each other.” Post-Sundance Filmmaker reached out to Rosskam, who is also a longtime artist and educator, to learn all about reframing queer history through a trans lens. After playing the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival and BFI Flare, Desire Lines will screen at the upcoming Wicked Queer, Cleveland International and Milwaukee film festivals.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024

Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace turned contemporary arts space turned festival headquarters) Kunsthal Charlottenborg actually spoke to me — a few literally as well as figuratively.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Ways of (nonbinary) thinking: on desire and Desire Lines

“Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires” reads the synopsis for Jules Rosskam’s Sundance-premiering (and Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition-winning) Desire Lines. It’s a hybrid doc that uses a fictional narrative to unbury inconvenient history. (How many of us know the name of the trailblazing author and activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first trans man to publicly identify as gay? Where’s Lou’s biopic?) And an experimental film that features shockingly frank contemporary interviews with trans men – which opens up a Pandora’s Box of questions and conundrums strictly for, and about, queers. (In other words, straight cis folks are welcome to look but don’t touch. Refreshingly, this conversation, for once, isn’t about you.)

To read the rest of my nonconforming essay visit Global Comment.

‘Adrianne & the Castle’ Review: A Grieving Man Builds a Shrine to His Late Wife in a Beautiful Documentary About a Love Larger Than Life

“Reality is for those who lack imagination” is one of the many witticisms dispensed by Adrianne Blue Wakefield St. George, the star and subject of Shannon Walsh’s documentary “Adrianne & The Castle” and a woman who also once proclaimed: “I am my own art.” Indeed she was. A gloriously Rubenesque force of nature who appeared to take her fashion and beauty tips from Divine, Adrianne was muse not only to herself but likewise to her adoring husband Alan St. George, who built a castle for — and his entire life around — his beloved wife of 30-plus years.

To read the rest of my (thumbs up) SXSW review visit IndieWire.

"A Film Can Be a Spark, and What Comes After It Is Where the Magic Is”: Elizabeth Nichols on Her True/False-Debuting Flying Lessons

Debuting at True/False (followed by First Look), Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons is a beautiful ode to a New York City Lower East Side artist as well as to the larger “dying breed” that once roamed the streets of Alphabet City, performing in its now extinct clubs. Importantly, it’s also a call to end rampant gentrification and a love story between director and character all rolled into one. The drama began, rather unhappily, with an eviction notice after NYC real estate owner/convicted fraudster Steve Croman bought the building Nichols was living in as a rent-stabilized tenant. Within months the “Bernie Madoff of landlords” had unleashed a harassment campaign (right down to the use of mafia-esque “tenant-relocation specialists”) that in turn led the filmmaker to join the Stop Croman Coalition, bringing her camera along to meetings to document the fight. It was at one of those SCC meetups that Nichols encountered her upstairs neighbor, a fiery-haired, septuagenarian bohemian named Philly Abe. The filmmaker then fell down a rabbit hole that lasted close to a decade, beginning with the discovery that Abe was a minor-cultural icon — an artist and performer and star of various underground movies (from other seminal underground figures like Todd Verow and the Kuchars). Their relationship eventually blossomed into a friendship that grew so deep that Nichols is now the caretaker of a historical treasure chest, much of it now resting at Howl Arts. The vast multimedia archive likewise features prominently in Flying Lessons, itself a cinematic fulfillment of the three-part promise Nichols made to Abe: to show her art, tell her story, and of course, fight for her apartment. A few days prior to the doc’s March 1st True/False premiere Filmmaker caught up with Nichols, a “25 New Faces of Independent Film” alum and an international educator, whose work in Tanzania has changed her own creative process and ways of thinking.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

"I Don’t Invest Hope in Celebrity or Leaders Too Much, But I Do Have Hope in People”: Mitch McCabe on Their True/False Premiere 23 Mile

While the pandemic spurred many (white collar) Americans to flee the big cities and retreat to the safety and comfort of living room Zooming, Detroit native Mitch McCabe returned home to the big city and instead roamed the often chaotic streets, eventually journeying throughout Michigan, camera in tow. What the veteran filmmaker-educator (and Flaherty Seminar and MacDowell fellow) witnessed was what we all primarily saw in that “unprecedented” election year: anger. At lockdowns, at those attending protests unmasked. And masked. At the murder of George Floyd, at the BLM movement, at Trump. At Democrat elites like Governor Gretchen Whitmer and President Joe Biden. And while the characters were likewise familiar — from white gun-toting militiamen to Black bullhorn-wielding activists — McCabe also dug deeper into this mess of humanity to capture scenes unfolding that were ever more surreal. A group of the aforementioned anti-government extremists on the steps of the state capitol defending, via an intimidatingly armed show of force, a Black activist’s right to free speech. A pro-Second Amendment speech in which he fervently addresses every “beautiful” person, including “women, men, and whatever they identify as.” Or an unexpectedly amiable guy standing outside his house (and lawn) plastered in Biden-Harris signs as he’s subject to jeers from his MAGA hood. So how does it feel to be the target of nonstop daily vitriol? “Sad,” he laments with a shrug. “Sad for the Trump folks because they’re so angry.” The result is McCabe’s endlessly fascinating and elegantly crafted 78-minute video diary titled 23 Mile, which serves as a much-needed cinematic reminder in this round two election year that uncomplicated narratives that simply confirm our preconceived notions do a disservice to us all. So just prior to the doc’s True/False debut today, Filmmaker reached out to the eclectic director, whose work runs the gamut from narrative to nonfiction, short to feature-length, and everything in between, to learn all about shooting in potentially explosive environments and extending an ear if not hand to the other side of the political divide.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.