Two San Francisco FTM transexuals sit in their back yard and discuss their daddy/boy relationship, transgender life, love, tattoos and tomato plants.

Boys in the Backyard 

 is a portrait of trans activists Leslie Feinberg and Riki Anne Wilchins who lead a movement to end a trans-exclusionary women's music festival.

 (created by Rhys Ernst, produced by Christine Bebe and presented by Focus Features), 

Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco, CA

Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Czech Republic

Camp Trans 

 is an animated, experimental, personal documentary about the filmmaker's first year on testosterone from an impressionistic and poetic perspective.

Change Over Time

 is pushed by her husband to write novels under his name. Upon their success, she fights to make her talents known, challenging gender norms.

Colette

This work by LA-based artist Rhys Ernst invokes the story of Lou Sullivan, trans man and AIDS activist largely responsible for establishing the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation. Cut with images of Ernst’s own examination of this figure and trans history, the video is structured by the search for and desire to identify transmasculine elders and an intergenerational exploration of gay transmasculine identity. Utilizing interview footage, excerpts of Sullivan’s book “Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual," VHS gay porn, and Grindr chats, 

 is a meditation on the life of the late trans man and AIDS activist that explores the bodily intersection of transmasculine gay and HIV+ identity.

 a program of seven videos that bring together charged moments and memories from their personal perspective amidst the public history of HIV/AIDS.

Dear Lou Sullivan

is a hybrid feature film that blends personal interviews, archival materials, and narrative fiction as a framework for exploring the complicated and often unwritten history of transmasculine sexuality. Testimonials from transgender men both past and present dissect how cultural expectations, political agendas, and gatekeeping practices shape the locus of desire.

The fictional story centers on Ahmad, an Iranian expat who arrived in the US at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Now in his 60s, concealing his trans identity for decades has meant distancing himself from intimacy. Ahmad comes to the LGBTQ archives of Chicago to explore his latent homosexuality and engage in fantasy to reimagine his life as an out, gay trans man.

He is assisted by Kieran, a twenty-something nonbinary archivist who is immersed in queer culture and trans community. An intergenerational friendship takes hold as Kieran realizes they are in the presence of a trans elder in need of guidance. Though they come from radically different cultures, Ahmad and Kieran’s bond is strengthened by a shared fascination with Lou Sullivan, a gay transgender AIDS activist. Ahmad sees himself in Lou, although his story is a sobering reminder of the cost of living as openly gay and trans.

Ahmad’s research blends fact with fiction, often diving into fantasy sequences that re-imagine the gay bathhouses of the 70s and 80s through a transmasculine lens. As his curiosity evolves, Ahmad’s insecurities begin to fall away. He’s fascinated when Kieran shares their experiences in the modern-day bathhouses of Chicago, though he initially lacks compassion when Kieran confesses to an STD scare. As the archive closes due to the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, Ahmad makes a final attempt at reconciliation with Kieran, ending on the promise of a blossoming friendship before transitioning into a final fantasy sequence at a traditional Persian bathhouse filled with queer and trans patrons. At last, Ahmad can finally feel desired for who he is.

Their story is punctuated throughout by intimate interviews with trans-identified men about their varied experiences with gay male cruising culture, affirming interactions in a bathhouse, or lack of adequate healthcare for masculine-of center folks. These brutally honest exchanges bring to light the untold history of a group of people who have been doubly marginalized by straight and gay communities alike.

The film pivots between fantasy, fiction, and fact using the letters and interviews of Lou Sullivan as the historical core. Interspersed throughout are clips of the heart-wrenching final interviews between psychiatrist Dr. Ira Pauly and Lou in his final days before succumbing to AIDS. Alongside the contemporary oral histories from a diverse group of transmen across the US, participants candidly discuss the evolution of their desires and illuminate their struggles with gender (non)conformity, fetishization, transphobia, safer sex, and sexual racism.

 is a tender love letter to the gay transmasculine community and the legacy that Lou Sullivan, and many unnamed others like him, left behind.

Desire Lines

 is an experimental film, retracing the autoethnography of a transmasculine member of the Chinese diaspora. 

This short film is the first of a series to come, it is born out of my political self-recovery and reflections on the meaning and crucial importance of racial passing in the context of a white-majority country.

I saw myself reflected in the little girl of the world famous photo from the Vietnam War, then found myself to be haunted by her, this film is the first in a series, that explores art as an act of mourning and of holding emotional space for the common experience of marginalized people's uncanny relationship to the dead and the wounded.

Embodiment

During a three-month residency serving as the Goethe at LUX Artist in Residence, Rosenfeld created a new filmic work entitled 

. After spending time in the LUX film archive, Liz came across Price‘s film, Sodom. At the time of its completion, Sodom was questioned by both the far-left and far-right for its depiction of the AIDS Crisis and its reflections on ‘pre-AIDS’ gay culture. After extensive research into the history, methodology and imagery of Sodom, Rosenfeld decided to create a new film portraying an infamous tree in the cruising area of Hampstead Heath while also reflecting on their own questions relating to shifting ecologies and queer historical public spaces. Taking from Luther Price’s methodologies of eroding film, Rosenfeld buried parts of their original print in the LUX Garden and also soaked it in their own cum.

While in residence at LUX, Liz conducted creative research dealing with questions of queer dystopia, a positive embrace of apocalypse, invisible genocide, and drawing parallels between the way information was publicly disseminated in the early days of the AIDS/ HIV crisis and the current spread of information about climate change and environmental destruction.

Fuck Tree

 re-imagines performance lineages surrounding the mythological figure of the Rangda: Bali’s queen of the graveyard and patroness of black magic. The story of Rangda, and her alter incarnation, the legendary witch widow Calonarang, occupies a central role within Bali’s spirit cosmology and frames a narrative around an undesirable woman as a dangerous and deviant social disrupter. 

However,alongside her feared otherness, Rangda is also conceived as a balancing force for spiritual order, and a powerful matriarchal protector. The film centres upon a matrilineal building and passing of knowledge around Rangda, channelling her presence through different bodies,performance genres and landscapes. GROH GOH proposes a matrilineal shapeshifting of Balinese art histories, as a counter to sustained colonial and touristic interpretations, and looks at how these stories migrate and reconfigure in diasporic contexts.

This film is part of Queer as Folk/lore, a QAMERAD x Otherness Archive collaborative film programme at Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest 2024. You can find more info about the programme below:



Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest Screening:
QAMERAD X Otherness Archive: Queer as Folk/lore
September 2024


"Fag-smoking behemoths, gender-bending fairies, reincarnated deer, queens of black magic—what’s on the horizon when queer desires reject mere visibility, and instead, manifest through these elusive, mythological characters? As global queer communities face increasing pressure to conform to neoliberal identity politics, these moving images from Indonesia turn back to pre-colonial folklore, escaping current regimes of control, from hetero-patriarchal representations to hegemonic State narratives. Within these works lie promising potential for radical liberation, where queer desires can live mythically and eternally, beyond recognition from society. This programme is curated by Rizky Rahad as part of SHARED CAMERA/DERIE, a QAMERAD x Otherness Archive collaboration supported by the British Council."

GROH GOH (Rehearsal for Rangda)

 continues Tontey’s ongoing research into the ancient knowledge, technologies and cosmology of the Minahasa, an Indigenous nation in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia. In this most recent work, the artist emphasises core Minahasa cultural beliefs in the all-encompassing equilibrium between the human and non-human. Drawing on her experience of karai, a ceremony that grants Minahasan warriors an armour of invincibility, the artist seeks to establish a queering approach towards gender, youth and ecology.

Garden Amidst the Flame

Gian is a 33-year-old Maltese trans man reading out a letter he had written to his former self.
Made as part of the Rosa Kwir project.

Għażiż a Janet: Ittra b’tislima lill-pass at (Dear Janet: A goodbye letter to the past)

In the mid-1990s, the first openly lesbian bar in South Korea, LesBos, opened its doors in Sinchon, Seoul. This documentary follows one of the bar’s proprietors, Myong-woo, whose witty commentary prompts a broader reflection on Seoul’s lesbian scene, and the evolution of the city’s queer spaces over the past five decades. In her feature debut, Kwon Aram documents generational change as she makes connections between past and present: from the 1976 police raid on Chanel, a women-only café that existed in Myeong-dong in the 1970s, to the more recent threat posed by Covid-19 to community solidarity. This is a film about a shared sense of belonging, and shared environments of kinship. Offering a rare insight into Seoul’s often-hidden lesbian history, Home Ground reveals the vibrancy and endurance of South Korea’s queer culture.

Home Ground

Non-binary, trans and genderqueer audience members discuss coded and direct non-binary, trans and queer representations in film, spanning from the earliest films to the most recent.

In Their View

Emerging from years in isolation to an enraptured crowd, a transgender, septuagenarian musical genius finally finds his place in the world. Part biopic, part tour documentary, Keyboard Fantasies tells the time-travelling tale of this mystical musician and vocalist, as the present finally catches up with him and he embarks on his first international tour at the age of 74

Keyboard Fantasies

Lou Sullivan discusses his mastectomy. Researched clips from: "Female to Gay Male Transsexualism: I-Gender & Sexual Orientation". 

Lou Sullivan: On His Top Surgery 

 is an experimental, historical narrative set in a mythologized, post-revolutionary Russia that re-imagines the story of the 1921 uprising of the Kronstadt sailors with a twist of gender anarchy. Agit-prop theatre group 

 guides the viewer through the story, which is narrated by fictionalized letters written by Stepan Petrichenko, the leader of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

Maggots and Men

Five years after the making of the video portrait Boys in the Backyard, the film maker returns to San Francisco to see what has become of Matt. Articulate and charming, Matt recounts some of his experiences as a transgendered FTM and changes in his life during the last five years..

Matt

is a ﬁlm exploring a trans* person's connection to their heritage - one not passed down by blood or lineage, but instead by a shared experience of oppression. To self-medicate is our heritage and has been a way for trans* folk to reclaim their agency and body back from those that treat their opinion on our experience as the absolute truth. Fear and access to knowledge make it diﬃcult for many of those to connect with their trans* heritage, and in this ﬁlm we follow one person in their journey to overcome these obstacles.


Ultimately, one message becomes clear: we are here, we deserve equal access to healthcare, and we deserve to feel at home in our bodies.

Medica_ed

This first feature documentary by Barbara Hammer, a pioneer of lesbian cinema, weaves striking images of four gay and lesbian couples with footage of an unearthed forbidden and invisible history. 

Archival footage from the first gay film in the U.S., Lot In Sodom (1933) is interwoven in this haunting documentary.

Nitrate Kisses

 is a community history project documenting twenty transmasculine people sharing their experiences playing, watching, loving, and building football spaces. From grassroots teams to playing for Manchester United, these vital, underrepresented stories were shared at Centre For Live Art Yorkshire in Leeds in July 2023, accompanied by a panel about the future of trans representation in sports.



 Marlowe is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on trans and queer historical and community research, writing, and film-making. The basis for their art is to create cases for inclusion, to preserve, uncover, and challenge histories and culture, and to build connections between the community through time and space.

The Offside Project originated when Marlowe was trying to find a football community that shared their experience, and discovering a dearth of transmasculine people. After two years of finalising, Marlowe got to chat with other transmasc people, building connections between our stories and what our futures can look like. During the interview stage of the project, the all-transmasculine football match on Trans Day of Visibility was played, changing the nature of transmasculine invisibility in sport spaces.


Most of the interviews took place over the course of two months, after which fourteen of them were edited into 15-20min audio-visual pieces shown in a gallery space on five different screens. Alongside the exhibition there was a sports-themed drag show featuring the artist and musician Ding Frisby, as well as the films Lotus Sports Club (dir. Vanna Hem)* and Who I Am Now (dir. Jack Goessens), both of which offer international perspectives on transness and sports.


The highlight of the event was a panel about transmasculine futures in football.** Each of the panellists gave a unique perspective on grassroots, professional, and spectator-based challenges in football spaces.** In addition there are interviews with Natalie Washington (Football v Transphobia) and Lucy Clarke (TRUK) about the work they do for the future of trans inclusive football.

*Learn more about Lotus Sports Club in Cambodia and to donate to its continued running


Project Managing, Interviews, Editing/Subtitling/Transcription, Event planning and hosting: Marlowe Mitchell
Interview production (London): Rico Jacob Chase
Creative Producer: Kit Miles
Social media: Robyn Leadbeater
Panel filming and editing/subtitling: SABLE (Leeds)
Event managing: Jessica Sweet (Centre for Live Art Yorkshire)
Oral histories training: Laura Mitchison, On The Record
Archiving: Otherness Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, West Yorkshire Archive
Panelists: Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ingrid Banerjee Marvin
Thank you to: On The Record, REED, Laura Mitchison, Kate Holland, Mimi Kimmling, Orlen Crawford, Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ding Frisby, Tommaso Colognese, Jack Goessens, Emma, You Can Play, Team Out And Proud, SABLE, The Arts Council, Kit Heyam, Adam Kashmiry, CLAY, Sweatmother, Robyn Leadbeater

Offside Project 

From the platonic cave to post-punk, the tape traces the invisible and visible references to women who love women from prehistory to contemporary times with the sarcastic sound of the ’50s lesbian quartet from Seattle, the Sluts from Hell.

The History of the World According to a Lesbian

Alopecic wings look for a hole to leave their garbage in, 

 - worlds and silhouettes
inﬂated balls of rebellion ooze antipathy everywhere...
silhouettes ﬂooded with craters release torpor and mercromine...
memories of hostile worlds that dance with the sound of chromatic bursts. Alopecic wings look for a hole to leave their garbage...
spikes full of ibuprofen surround crestfallen skyscrapers...
a hell of contradictory peace elongates the nakedness of the fool.
sunken ﬂies in adamantium walls look at you with dread...
arrows gestated at sunset make up an asymptomatic veil
of fear and ignorance. 




I'm still on the other side...
openly chained to your destiny...
destroying rotten nightmares of ancestors and predecessors..
and all this while I have breakfast.


don't point at me...
turn against your patches...I have deﬁnitely come to stay...suffer.

The Ignored Alopecia of the Fly

 travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.


TJ Cuthand is a filmmaker and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. 

Woman Dress

The artist, Anuka Ramischwili-Schäfer has been putting together an archive of their great grandfather’s documents: he was a Georgian Marxist economist executed by Stalin in the purges of the 1930s. The film looks at some of his documents, including the execution papers, alongside a poetic essay on the Caucasus/West Asia/the objectification of the post Soviet.

This is an introduction to a longer piece that is still in the works, which began as a metadata and digitisation research project as part of their Librarianship Masters.

Categories

History