Outfest, Anthology Film Archives-NYC, Cineworks-Vancouver, SQIFF-Scottish Queer Film Festival, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Altes Finanzamt-Berlin, MIX Copenhagen, Cinema of the Dam’d-Amsterdam, and the Lesbian Ranch House-Olympia.
It is still challenging to locate an entirely trans*-specific history, or physical evidence of a past prior to these sudden and current "revelations” of visibility. The work in this program addresses the erasure of rich legacies of trans* and queer activism and art by creating artworks that revisit and re-imagine these stories. Mining existing archives and creating new ones, Unearthing Trans* Legacies proposes alternative modes of retrieving and disseminating a trans* past through an erotic gaze and experiments in form and narrative storytelling. Defiantly looking towards a future of pleasure, sincerity, and beauty; these works place trans* sexual expression and resistance in conversation with a non-linear idea of history, that is both real and fabricated, to address how limited evidence of a past shapes our understandings of the present.
ECHO PARK FILM CENTER, Los Angeles
ATA, San Francisco
the here and now, a visit (2015) by Finn Paul
The Time-Eaters (2014) by Harry Dodge
While the worlds of the films, while very much in the present, are imbued with a queer futurity and not solely “buddy films”, the core of each film is a relationship between two people on a “masculine” spectrum. According to Robert Kolker in a Cinema of Loneliness, “The buddy complex views sexuality as an obstacle to manly acts. But this denial of sexuality carries a covert admission of the possibility of homosexuality, which, of course, is inadmissible.” Obviously, that is not of concern in these films. With that concern out of the way, what do these films say about fantasy, trauma, whiteness, and language through relations built on exchanges of tenderness and curiosity?
A monthly series of Queer artist talks in Portland, OR that ran from 2009-2011.
Featuring: Kaj-Anne Pepper, Lacy Davis, Sarai Black, Malic Amalya, Wayne Bund, Sarah Faith.
