The SCAD Savannah Film Festival presents Wonder Women: Below the Line

Taking place on a Thursday morning in late October at the Gutstein Gallery (or online for pass-holders who didn’t care to brave the rain), the Wonder Women: Below the Line panel at this year’s SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 23-30) felt like a breath of fresh air. Moderated by Variety’s Jazz Tangcay, the participants included talent agent June Dowad, editor Pamela Martin (King Richard, Battle of the Sexes, The Fighter), and production designers Diane Lederman (CODA, The Americans, The Leftovers) and Ina Mayhew (Queen Sugar, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, Second Generation Wayans): All fiercely self-assured, middle-aged women with a wealth of knowledge. Not to mention careers long enough to allow them to bluntly call BS on a still gender-biased system.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

The SCAD Savannah Film Festival presents Wonder Women: Producers

A perennial highlight at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 23-30), this year’s back-to-in-person (and virtually for pass-holders) Wonder Women: Producers panel was jam-packed with industry insights from a refreshing range of female perspectives. Engagingly moderated by SAGindie executive director Darrien Gipson, the event took place at the cozy Gutstein Gallery late on a Friday morning. On hand were Alison Owen (Harlots, Ghosts, Elizabeth), Seanne Winslow (The Lego Movie, The Life of Pablo/Yeezy Season 3 and The Falconer, which took Best Narrative Feature at the fest), Kaila York (a producer working mainly with Lifetime, Hallmark and Netflix), Jaclyn Moore (Dear White People, Love Life, Queen America), and Katie Spikes (a CBS vet and senior story editor at 60 Minutes).

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Review: Pier Kids

Pier Kids, the latest doc from Elegance Bratton (executive producer and creator of Viceland’s My House) captures both the struggles and the joys of three queer and trans youth who make their home on NYC’s Christopher Street Pier. Currently in production on his upcoming narrative feature The Inspection, an autobiographical story starring Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union, the director himself spent a decade living on the streets before finding filmmaking while serving as a US Marine. (Bratton then went on to earn degrees from NYC’s notorious gentrifying institutions Columbia and NYU.) In other words, Pier Kids, which made its US broadcast debut on August 2nd on PBS’s POV, paints a loving and respectful insider’s portrait; while also managing to be a cinematic clarion call urging us to bear witness to the unhoused hiding in plain sight. (Except of course when they’re being heavily policed. And ironically in this case, in the West Village and on its waterfront – historically safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth ever since the Stonewall Uprising supposedly put an end to such injustice.)

To read the rest visit Global Comment.

“If Something Gives Me the Chills, or If I Ever Think, ‘Is This Too Much?’, Then I Know I Have to Use It”: Michelle Handelman on the 25th Anniversary Rerelease of BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes And Sadomasochism

Filmmaker/video artist/photographer/performance artist/writer/professor Michelle Handelman is a 2011 Guggenheim fellow and 2019 Creative Capital awardee whose work is featured in collections from Napa, California to Paris to Moscow. But back in the early 90s Handelman was simply an explorer with a video camera, diving headlong into a San Francisco Leatherdyke scene that would pave the way for today’s gender nonconformity movement as we know it. Her resulting film, 1995’s BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes And Sadomasochism – just rereleased last month with bonus extras by Kino Lorber – is an artistic amalgam both of its time and surprisingly timely. Scenes from leather pageants are interspersed with frank discussions with players (topics include topping from the bottom and being a macho femme), and accompanied by an in-your-face punk and post-industrial soundtrack by beloved bands like Frightwig and Coil. There are also an abundance of non-sugarcoated interviews with politically inconvenient pioneers. Writer Patrick Califia (before he began identifying as a bi trans man) and Queen Cougar (1993’s Ms. SF Leather and one of the few Black faces in a seemingly overwhelmingly white scene) are especially vociferous about securing visibility and acceptance. And this at a time when their unabashed embrace of BDSM horrified both left-wing feminists (who saw sadomasochism as a self-loathing extension of the patriarchy) and right-wing organizations like the American Family Association (which used clips from the film in its fight to defund the NEA). Not to mention the stance of the American Psychiatric Association, which only stopped classifying kink as a mental disorder less than a dozen years ago. The genre-defying Handelman – who according to her provocative bio creates “confrontational works that explore the sublime in its various forms of excess and nothingness” – found time to fill Filmmaker in on the rerelease, and also on how far queer culture has come in the past quarter century. And how far we’ve yet to go.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Sarah Rose Huckman, ‘Changing the Game’

Michael Barnett’s Changing the Game, now streaming on Hulu, is a deep dive into the lives of three teenage athletes — Mack Beggs, Andraya Yearwood and Sarah Rose Huckman — each fighting to make their marks in their chosen sports — wrestling, track and skiing, respectively — while also having to fight for the right to compete on teams comprised of peers who share their gender identity. It’s a battle that would seem laughably nonsensical if it wasn’t so heartbreaking. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Kafkaesque vilification of Texas State Champion Beggs by the parents of female wrestlers, furious that his natural talent and uncompromising work ethic, enhanced by shots of testosterone, place him at an "unfair advantage" in girls wrestling. And Beggs probably couldn’t agree more — he’s been trying desperately to compete on the boys’ team for years. It’s only the big, overreaching government hand of the Lone Star State that’s stubbornly stood in his way. Indeed, one of the more remarkable revelations in Changing the Game is how transphobia is less a grassroots left vs. right issue than a kids vs. adults problem. All three protagonists hail from loving families in both red and blue states (Beggs resides with Trump-supporting grandparents who are also fierce advocates for their grandson) and have a close-knit community of supportive friends, schoolmates and partners. Unlike in the bad old "don’t ask don’t tell" days before the legalization of gay marriage, the only bullying these teens seem to encounter is from the so-called adults outside the classroom (and of course on Fox News). So to find out how exactly Gen Z is "changing the game" — and by extension queer rights — Documentary checked in with the politico of the film, New Hampshire’s Sarah Rose Huckman. Huckman bravely stood up to her own state’s bizarrely coercive policy that demanded trans athletes undergo gender-reassignment surgery (knowing fully well that such surgery is not even an option for kids) before playing on teams aligned with their gender identity. And she won. Which is why Documentary is especially pleased that this passionate skier, activist and policymaker agreed to add June Doc Star of the (Pride) Month to her impressive CV.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Whose Pride? (or the tyranny of heteronormativity)

Corporate-sponsored lip service. Calls for the kink community to go back in the closet for the sake of a family-friendly Pride. And now the so-called “liberal” media (i.e., The Washington Post and The New York Times) siding with the GOAL (Gay Officers Action League) cops who want to be allowed to march in uniform in NYC’s annual commemoration of the Stonewall Uprising, a civil rights event triggered by – you guessed it – police brutality. It’s enough Orwellian drama to make me want to turn in my queer card.

To read the rest of my critique of the latest ludicrous debate visit Global Comment.

“An Overt Anti-Patriarchal, Anti-Assimilationist Gesture Within the Framework of ‘Queer Refusal'”: Angelo Madsen Minax on His Tribeca-premiering North By Current

One of the most thrillingly radical aspects of Angelo Madsen Minax’s astonishing North By Current, which premiered at the Berlinale and now makes its North American debut at Tribeca, is the film’s centering of absence, of its maker’s firm belief in the idea that “a viewer is not entitled to every piece of information.” Minax began shooting North By Current upon his return home to rural Michigan after the death of his niece, a toddler whose passing put Minax’s emotionally fragile sister and her formerly incarcerated husband in the crosshairs of Children’s Protective Services (which in turn led to law enforcement investigating CPS). The life-shattering event also set the stage for another confrontation of sorts, between Minax himself and his Mormon parents who felt themselves still grieving the “loss” of their own child — a girl named Angela who’d transitioned to this stranger with a camera filming in their living room. And yet North By Current staunchly refuses to be about any of this. Instead Minax focuses on the bigger universal picture – love and the change of seasons that we all share. Ultimately, his steadfast withholding of answers allows us to discover deeper ones within ourselves. So to find out how he did (and did not) do it, Filmmaker reached out to the multidisciplinary artist just prior to the doc’s North American premiere (in TFF’s Viewpoints section).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Whose revolution?: As I Want

FEMINISM: Following a string of sexual assaults, As I Want documents a burgeoning women’s rebellion. Samaher Alqadi’s As I Want is a much-needed corrective to the feel-good stories we like to tell ourselves about those on the frontlines of righteous rebellion. On the second anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian uprising that brought down the government of Hosni Mubarak, another gathering in Cairo’s infamous square ignited a second reckoning. One that forced many of the country’s citizens, including the filmmaker herself, to ask a difficult question: Whose revolution?

To find out read my critique at Modern Times Review.

American exceptionalism is killing America

Russell T Davies’s British (by way of HBO Max) series It’s a Sin is as well-written, fun and campy as his late 90s Queer as Folk. Though QaF as a psychological horror film, with AIDS as the ticking time bomb under the table. Both rocked me to the core and inspired this latest pandemic reflection.

Doc Star of the Month: Ollie Lucks, ‘There Is No "I" in Threesome'

There Is No "I" in Threesome is certainly a doc I would not have predicted to have world-premiered at the WarnerMedia Lodge at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Set for a pre-Valentine’s Day streaming debut on February 11 (as an HBO Max Original), the project is directed by and stars New Zealand-based filmmaker Jan Oliver “Ollie” Lucks. Lucks is the son of an Iranian-Indian mother and a German father, and only moved to New Zealand a decade and a half ago to pursue his craft. Once there, however, he met an actress named Zoe. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love and plan a wedding. And then boy and girl hatch another plan: open their sexual relationship to other boys and girls. And, most consequentially, record their entire polyamorous journey. What were they thinking? Well, that was just one of a multitude of questions Documentary had. Which is why we hatched our own plan to spotlight the sexually intrepid Lucks as our February Doc Star of the Month.

To read my probing interview visit Documentary magazine.

"...Liz was Isolated as a Felon on the Run, Transitioning Alone”: Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker on Their HBO Docuseries The Lady and the Dale

Binge-worthy doesn’t even begin to describe The Lady and the Dale, Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker’s four-part, one-of-a-kind docuseries, premiering January 31 on HBO. Produced by the Duplass brothers, this twist-and-turning saga stars a three-wheeled car called the Dale (that may or may not have been viable) and its marketer extraordinaire, a visionary female entrepreneur (and longtime serial con artist) named Elizabeth Carmichael. With a promise of 70 miles to the gallon at a time when the 70s oil crisis was leaving Americans to linger at gas stations in Soviet-long lines, the Dale seemed to many a dream come true. And to others, too good to be true.

To read my interview with the filmmakers, who describe a head spinning journey back in time and down the rabbit hole, visit Filmmaker magazine.