Doc Stars of the Month: Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, 'Unsettled'

Taking Best Documentary Feature Film at last year's Outfest, Tom Shepard's Unsettled, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee, adheres to every fraught definition of its title. Debuting on WORLD Channel on June 28 (and available for streaming on WorldChannel.org through July 12), the film follows four newly arrived LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers — Subhi, a gay man from Syria; Junior, a gender-nonconforming gay man from the DRC; and Cheyenne and Mari, a lesbian couple from Angola. Over several years, Shepard's camera captures this diverse foursome as they all figure out how to navigate life on these increasingly hostile shores — and in the process learn the true price of American freedom.

So for this Pride "Doc Star of the Month," Documentary is honored to spotlight two brave LGBTQ asylum seekers, Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, who traded horrific threats on their lives for a more mundane form of US insecurity.

To read my interview with the persevering duo visit Documentary magazine.

“We Prioritized Hiring Trans Crew, and When We Couldn’t do That We Mentored Trans People on Set”: Sam Feder on Disclosure

Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder (Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger) and executive produced by Laverne Cox, debuts on Netflix today, June 19th. And in the wake of the whiplash from the Trump administration’s decision to erase healthcare protections for trans people, followed by the US Supreme Court’s momentous ruling protecting those same folks from workplace discrimination, it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The doc is an exhaustive and entertaining look at how trans individuals have historically been depicted onscreen through surprising archival footage (Birth of a Nation and Bugs Bunny make appearances) and insightful interviews with a diverse array of activists and artists (everyone from the ACLU’s Chase Strangio, one of the attorneys on plaintiff Aimee Stephens’ winning team, to directors Lily Wachowski and Yance Ford).

During the start of this chaotic Pride Month, Feder took a few moments to fill Filmmaker in on the project, including working with an all-queer crew and celebrating the wide range of trans men and women and gender nonconforming trailblazers (who look nothing like the white and wealthy Caitlyn Jenner).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

From Stonewall to George Floyd (and back again)

June 28, 1969 – July 3, 1969. Those were the dates of the Stonewall Uprising. The days – and I emphasize the plural – that changed US LGBTQ history forever. What we too often forget, with our current-day corporate-packaged Pride parades and complementary brand marketing, is the messiness of the rebellion. Like with the decades-long civil rights movement, a half century on we’ve sanitized the struggle. As the feel-good fairytale goes, “In the blink of one night a community of righteous gays stood together in kumbaya harmony to neutralize law enforcement with a single kick line.” And though the Uprising did indeed feature a kick line, it also featured violence. Lots of it. Several nights, in fact, of broken glass, raging fires, street fights and looting. The West Village as war zone.

To read more of my musings on the queer connection to our current moment visit Global Comment.

Five Docs to Stream at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020 Virtual Edition

This year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, streaming nationwide from June 11-20, is chock-full of impressive cinematic gems that delve into a wide variety of important topics woefully underrepresented onscreen. Beginning with opening night’s Belly of the Beast, the latest from Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Erika Cohn (The Judge), which shines a light on the involuntary sterilizations running rampant in our US federal prison system, the fest continues to express its commitment to strong films by and about women.

 

To read the rest of my streaming suggestions visit Filmmaker magazine.