This short film looks at queer imagery, fat-phobia, and reclamation through autobiographical narrative, black and white photography, and stop motion animation.

In Aztec mythology, the goddess Coyolxauhqui was severed into pieces by her brother, the god of war. This film recounts the lessons learned by a queer daughter from her round mother’s body, framed by the story of Coyolxauhqui. It opens with a bright gold and turquois rendering of the goddess breaking apart and trailing off the screen. It is quickly replaced by black and white photos of Pendleton Jiménez as a child beside her mother. She describes the comfort of snuggling into her mother’s big, soft body while recounting the hurtful comments about weight directed at this body. The daughter learns to take seriously her mother’s warning, “not to ever say anything bad about a person’s body.” Through childhood stories and then erotic photos of herself as a butch lover, Pendleton Jiménez attempts to reconcile the ambivalence she experiences over her own body, where maleness and femaleness collide. Using stop-motion animation, she returns to Coyolxauhqui’s story and image, looking for a way to feel beautiful. 

 was produced as part of an LGBTQ health centre program to create films about queer women’s bodies.

Butch Coyolxauhqui

 takes viewers on an evocative, thought-provoking journey through the iconoclastic life of game-changing artist Chavela Vargas. Centered around never before-seen interview footage of Chavela shot 20 years before her death in 2012, and guided by the stories in Chavela’s songs, and the myths and tales others have told about her – as well as those she spread about herself – the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

Chavela

There are no more walls, things are not repetitive, my body is not a vessel, I am no longer suffocated. I breathe, I look, I touch myself, I find myself, I sit, he accompanies me. He accompanies me in my steps, with his hands he washes my face after feeling that pain that is no longer there, he is here with me, we feel each other, we touch each other, we transform each other. I am not alone, my mantra changes, I no longer have nightmares, now I inhabit myself.

Ya no hay paredes, las cosas no son repetitivas, mi cuerpo no es una vasija, ya no estoy asfixiado. Respiro, miro, me toco, me encuentro, me siento, me acompaña. Me acompaña en mis pasos, con sus manos me lava la cara después de sentir ese dolor que ya no está, está acá conmigo, nos sentimos, nos tocamos, nos transformamos. No estoy solo, mi mantra cambia, ya no tengo pesadillas, ahora me habito.

HABITÁNDOME

 is a performance-for-video in which I project the one photograph I have of my maternal grandfather onto my face. Having passed away when my mother was nine, I never had the opportunity to meet him. Due to tragic events, my mother had lost all of her personal belongings and family photographs after having already moved to the states, and this image is the only one that has survived. Because of familial disconnection following my gender transition, I do not have contact with the majority of my family on her side. In this performance, I look for genetic similarities using technology and a broken mirror. I question bloodlines, ancestral relationships, and challenge the very idea of ‘disconnection’ from those we are eternally and inherently connected to.

Mi Abuelo y Yo (The Only Image)

La Tortillera was developed by Xandra Ibarra as a live performance in 2004 when she performed under the alias of La Chica Boom. The performance was later archived for camera in 2014. 

, Ibarra takes on her own racial bondage to hot sauce, tacos, and demographic panic in “Tortillera.” She dances a 60’s border corrida as a camp version of a Mexican housewife, makes tacos with her panties, and “spreads her seed” onto tacos with her “Tapatio cock.”

Spictacle II: La Tortillera

is a documentary film that captures the perspective of transgender masculinity in 4 visions that confront gender expectations and trans* living experiences at the border of the night, the self-narratives of fragmented (or not) biographies, the map of the body history on a trans-masculine identity and the way that transgender men make collectivity in México city every day.

The documentary explores these issues through personal and public situations around 6 trans* men characters who terrorized the normative lifestyle of traditional masculinity.

 arises from the director's question: Whose masculinity is it? Living as a trans man, his self-perceived masculinity is acquired and not imposed, thus explaining that there are bodies that move towards a masculinity in principle denied to bodies with a vulva and subsequently shaped by situations, experiences, and spaces, both personal and public.

Terroristas de la Masculinidad

Anderson (birth name ‘Vera’) is a transsexual man who lives in a correctional facility for young people. He later meets a benevolent man, who helps him come into his gender identity and begin to dress as a man, and eventually falls in love with a woman and passing as cisgender to her family.

CW: Disturbing themes and use of outdated language 

Vera

In a small conservative mountain village in Jalisco, Alex has constructed his identity and defended his dreams: fatherhood, music, and being a man.


Victoria

When Mac, a young butch Latina, dies, her girlfriend, Hope, must overcome both personal grief and homophobic hostilities from Mac’s family in order to respectfully send Mac off into the afterlife as she would’ve wanted.

Vámonos

 is a portrait of Silver Platter, a historic bar on the east side of Los Angeles that has catered to the Latin immigrant and queer community since 1963. With a touch of magical realism, the bar itself becomes a character in the film. Voiced by a transgender actress from Guatemala, it whispers the histories of the LGBT community from whom it has provided sanctuary and "safe space" for generations. 

The film captures the creativity that ensues when a group of young queer artists( Wu Tsang, Dj NGUZUNGUZU and Total Freedom) organise a weekly a performance party, also called Wildness, at the bar. This emergent underground interfaces with the emigrant trans women who have long populated the venue and the Silver Platter becomes a charged forum for forging coalitions and exploring class, community and activism.

Categories

Latinx Experiences