Series Site
December 15–18
“The Cinema of Gender Transgression: Trans Film” is an extensive, ongoing series exploring the ways in which cinema has intersected with the experiences, struggles, and ideas of transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming lives and communities. Organized with the participation of a variety of guest curators, the series showcases contemporary films and videos that explore concepts related to gender transgression as well as films that have had historical resonance within and beyond these communities.
Transgender and gender-nonconforming issues hold a more prominent place in the national conversation today than ever before, though gender transgression and the experiences of these individuals have always existed. This series aims to call attention to those films that dared to question gender norms in periods when even to broach the topic was considered controversial, and to provide a platform for the contemporary socio-political concerns of trans filmmakers and artists challenging the gender binary today.
This installment – the first since the series was interrupted by the pandemic – encompasses four programs. We begin with “Exuberance As Process”, a program of short films by visual artists, removed from their gallery installation contexts and collated into a linear program. Asa Mendelsohn’s new diaristic essay film PASTURE, in which he unpacks his role in a border community’s resistance movement, will screen as a stand-alone screening and conversation with the filmmaker, as will Devynn Emory’s DEADBIRD, a filmic reimagining of a live performance piece whose scheduled premiere in Spring 2020 was canceled thanks to the coming of COVID. And last but not least, CASA SUSANNA, the most recent work from established queer filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz, traces archival materials to discover a secret network of cross-dressers and trans women who, during the 1950s, founded a clandestine club in New York’s Catskills.
“The Cinema of Gender Transgression” is curated in collaboration with Joey Carducci and Angelo Madsen Minax. Throughout the series, guest curators contribute programs as well.