Filmmaker's 20 Most Read Posts of 2022

Well worth the end-of-year read! And not just because my interview, “We’re All Pornographers Now”: Juliet Bashore on Her 2K-Restored Kamikaze Hearts, was the top post of 2022. (Smart sex still sells.)

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers

Without a doubt one of the highlights of the 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival – and there were many, with this year’s red carpet attendees ranging from Kerry Condon, to Janelle Monáe, to Eddie Redmayne, to Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing recipient Ron Howard – was the Wonder Women: Producers panel, which took place at the light-filled Gutstein Gallery on a balmy October afternoon. Moderated as usual by industry vet Darrien Gipson, a specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the Executive Director of SAGindie, participants included English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey), English film producer Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks), manager and producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True), and indie icon and Killer Films founder Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol). Which meant that, including Gipson, half the panel were women of colour – split equally between sides of the pond – and representing multiple generations. Not a common sight on festival panels, let alone on industry boardrooms. Yet.

To read the rest visit Outtake magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Zarifa Ghafari, 'In Her Hands'

Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follows the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to come calling. (Though Hilary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, co-founders of HiddenLight Productions and the film’s EPs, did answer the call.) While still in her 20s, Zarifa Ghafari became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the youngest to ever hold that job. And she was appointed by the recently deposed President Ashraf Ghani to the leadership role — not in relatively tolerant Kabul, but in Maidan Shahr, in the conservative province of Wardak, where the Taliban have long had widespread support. Nevertheless, 2020’s International Woman of Courage, who would go on to survive three assassination attempts, seemed to be making her mark when the filmmakers started following her inspirational tale that very same year. But then a fateful decision in a faraway corridor of power was made that changed the course of the film — and Afghanistan’s history (yet again). Luckily, Ghafari managed to hold out in Kabul right up until its devastating fall — with the camera, surprisingly, continuing to roll. And fortunately for Documentary, the passionate advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan, who continues her activism from her new refuge in Germany, found time to serve as our November Doc Star of the Month. In Her Hands releases globally on Netflix on November 16.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers (the Christine Vachon Edition)

Moderated by Darrien Gipson, Executive Director of SAGindie, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival was a must-catch, mostly for two glaringly obvious reasons, with the first being the wide diversity of the participants. Alongside white Brits Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, perennial panelist and SCAD Savannah Film Festival Advisory Board member) and manager-producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True, and Sir Kenneth’s longtime rep), there was the English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), and American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey). Then there was the second reason — the presence of “grande dame” of indie film (per Gipson), Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol), who has been running her female-led Killer Films since the mid-’90s. In other words, Vachon had more than a panel’s worth of wisdom to dispense.

To learn more visit Filmmaker magazine.

Why trans bodies matter (hint: It’s the Patriarchy, Stupid)

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, leaving reproductive rights to be strangled by the groping hands of overwhelmingly male Republican state legislatures across the US, progressive activists demanded action. And the Democrat-controlled federal government, having dropped the ball on abortion and facing tough midterm elections this fall, swiftly responded with two bills: one which codified the right to same-sex (and interracial – an added fuck you/“dare you to overrule that” touch to Justice Thomas) marriage, the other the right to contraception. The former quickly passed the House – including with support from members of the party that killed Roe – while the latter seems DOA in the Senate. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, led the professional political pundits to first express “shock” at both outcomes, and then to wildly hypothesize. How had an IUD become more controversial than gay marriage? And was this actually a silver-lined sign of progress? (Of course not.)

So to read the rest of my essay on how the political punditry got it so wrong visit Global Comment.

Safe sex scenes: Body Parts

SEX: Exploring the female body in Hollywood by tracing the making of sex scenes, the toll it takes on those involved, and what it means for women in the real world. For most of its history, Hollywood has been globally gaslighting the world, exporting the lie that the male gaze is somehow always benign or «neutral,» when of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Fortunately, we now have Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s (Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines) eye-opening Body Parts, which world-premiered in the Spotlight Documentary section of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, to unpack both how we got to this patriarchal cinematic state and how those in the camera’s line of sight are now shooting back. Drawing from a sweeping range of classic film clips and knowledgeable voices on the subject of simulated sex onscreen – from film scholars to intimacy coordinators to Jane Fonda – the doc is, sadly, proof positive that it didn’t have to be this way; the «inevitably» of female objectification in the movies actually the result of a highly systematic manmade plan.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

“I Can’t Afford to Let Cliches Live in the Cinema I Make”: Leilah Weinraub on Shakedown

Leilah Weinraub’s 2018 Shakedown, which began playing Metrograph on June 17th (and has been held over through June 30th due to high demand), has been touted by Variety as the “the first-ever non-adult film” to be picked up by Pornhub. Yet it could also be called the sex site’s first-ever Berlinale-premiering and Tate/ICA/MoMA PS1/Whitney Biennial-screened acquisition. And likely the smut streamer’s first-ever labor of love release as well. Indeed, Shakedown is a film that defies any easy categorization. Ostensibly a longform cinematic exploration (crafted over 15 years starting in 2002) of the titular, mid-city, Los Angeles, Black lesbian strip club, the doc is likewise a study in the invention of identity, family and community — especially for those marginalized by both blood relatives and society. It’s also a heck of a risk-taking endeavor: Neither a feminist film nor an easily digestible depiction of Black women for that matter, the true (and unapologetically self-proclaimed) stars of the doc are just as comfortable expressing sexual fluidity (the legendary dancer Egypt reminisces about the time before she was gay) as they are popping a bare booty for the lens.

So to read my interview with the intersectional industry vet behind the lens - a NYC-based native of LA whose unconventional career has taken her from being mentored by Tony Kaye, to working with Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, to serving as CEO of the street-wear fashion brand Hood By Air - visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Marshall Ngwa aka BeBe Zahara Benet, 'Being BeBe'

World-premiering at the 2021 Tribeca Festival, Emily Branham’s Being BeBe is a revealing walk (uh, sashay) down memory lane with the titular BeBe Zahara Benet, the very first winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, back in 2009. Well, not exactly. Rather, BeBe’s equally charismatic conjurer — a Minnesota transplant from Cameroon named Marshall Ngwa — actually takes the lead in guiding us through 15 vérité-captured years of the artist’s creatively fulfilling/financially devastating (though fortunately, family-supportive) life — from her humble amateur drag beginnings in Minneapolis in 2006 (when Branham, whose sister was a backup dancer for the performer, began filming) to the heights of reality-show fame, and then back down to the brutal reality of the murder of George Floyd and a COVID lockdown-stalled career. Until naturally, this unrelenting champion of “Queer Black Excellence” ultimately rises, phoenix-style, in fabulous heels once again. All of which makes Ngwa/Benet the quintessential fit for Documentary’s June Pride Doc Star of the Month. Being BeBe premieres June 21 on Fuse (and OUTtv in Canada).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“The Way the Janes Approached This, One Woman at a Time, Helped 11,000 Women Get Safe Abortion Care”: Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes on their Human Rights Watch Film Festival closing night doc The Janes

The Janes, which closes this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in-person May 26, followed by an HBO premiere June 8, is one woefully prescient walk down pre-Roe memory lane. Directed by Academy Award nominee Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water, which also nabbed the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Gotham Independent Film Award back in 2008) and Emmy nominee Emma Pildes (Spielberg, which the debut director likewise produced for HBO), the doc tells the illicit tale of the titular underground network of college-age activists who defied the law (and male expectations) to provide women in Chicago with safe, shame-free abortions. Until, perhaps inevitably, they got busted in a headline-grabbing raid (by the homicide arm of the CPD no less). And then, in the most Hollywood of twists, found the tide of history that they’d helped turn was actually on their side. Pildes and Lessin (whose accolade-laden bio also includes “two Emmy nominations, one arrest, and a lifetime ban from Disneyland” for the late-90s TV series The Awful Truth) found time just prior to their doc’s Human Rights Film Festival launch to give us the scoop on combining contemporary interviews with archival footage from a clandestine past; resulting in an unnerving portrait of a possibly hellish future (at least, as usual, for the young, BIPOC and poor). (The Human Rights Watch Film Festival streams nationwide May 20-26 at The IFC Center. All ticket purchases help subsidize the cost of free tickets – set aside on a first come first-served basis – as HRWFF does “not want the cost of entry to be a barrier for participation in the festival.”)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

True Romance: Kamikaze Hearts

Juliet Bashore’s Kamikaze Hearts, originally released in 1986 and now set to screen in a new 2K restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive (May 13 in NYC at BAM and May 20 in LA at Alamo Drafthouse with a nationwide rollout to follow), is a mesmerizing time capsule of the San Francisco porn industry in the 80s, told through the toxic romance of two star-crossed lesbian lovers. It was an era defined by a Hollywood-conjured president, busily selling trickle-down snake oil to the masses while blithely ignoring a fast-moving epidemic (that would go on to kill well over 30 million). None of which is explicitly addressed in Kamikaze Hearts, but rather looms like a boom mic hovering from above offscreen.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

“We’re All Pornographers Now”: Juliet Bashore on Her 2K-Restored Kamikaze Hearts

Any director whose bio includes being fired from “an animated children’s film for Miramax titled The Great North Pole Elf Strike for portraying Santa’s elves as gay” is my kind of filmmaker. And Juliet Bashore, of the aforementioned dismissal, also has the added distinction of being the force behind the prescient time capsule of the pre-gentrified San Francisco sex industry, Kamikaze Hearts (1986). That “fictionalized documentary” (“hybrid” was a term yet to be coined) depicted the doomed relationship between lovestruck Tigr (also a producer on the film) and the object of her adoration, gender fluid “(nonbinary” was likewise not yet coined) porn star Sharon Mitchell, aka “Mitch.” It’s a film that certainly defied expectations back then — the period’s average mainstream movie contained hotter sex scenes — as well as now, with the riveting psychodrama’s upcoming rerelease in a 2K restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. So to learn all about the journey from underground to establishment, Filmmaker reached out to the unconventional film artist (and VR pioneer) a week before, via Kino Lorber, the doc’s nationwide rollout, starting with a May 13th NYC debut at BAM and May 20th in LA at Alamo Drafthouse.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Erotic Auteur Jennifer Lyon Bell on SMUT, TEDx Talks and CineKink NYC

In the world of erotic cinema, veteran indie filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell is a (non-nuclear) household name. An early member of both the feminist porn and ethical porn movements, the director-producer — and curator, writer and teacher — has for over a decade and a half been on a transatlantic mission to spread the sex-positive word. And now the Amsterdam-based expat and founder of Blue Artichoke Films will be Zooming in to this year’s virtual CineKink (May 4-8 with a week of encores to follow) on the afternoon of May 8 to present “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own Erotic Movie,” a “two-hour virtual workshop, designed to put you in touch with your own creative desires, and help you plan the one perfect sexy film you’d make if money and reality were no object!” (Yes, dream big but fantasize bigger.) Which gave Filmmaker the perfect excuse to check back in with the ridiculously busy Bell to find out what she’s been up to since last penning one of our top posts of 2021.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We All Have our Unique Biologies, a Variety of Differences”: Phyllis Ellis on her Hot Docs-Debuting Category: Woman

Middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has won two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women’s 800-meter competition. But no amount of endurance training could have prepared this South African Olympian for the long legal battle (a dozen years and counting) sparked by that very first 2009 World Championship victory. While other winning athletes were celebrating in Berlin, this Black woman from the Global South was undergoing “sex testing,” her right to even compete being thrown into question by a sports governing body made up almost wholly of white European men. But optics be damned. In the end, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) decided that “identified” female athletes (which creepily reads like a euphemism for “nonwhite”) would have to bring down their testosterone levels if they wanted to keep racing. In other words, undergo medically unnecessary procedures on their healthy bodies. That’s supposedly to protect the sanctity of the sport and ensure “fair play,” although, of course, to protect from whom and ensure for whom is the elephant-size question that still lingers like the stench of a locker room. Fortunately, Canadian filmmaker (and writer, actor and producer) Phyllis Ellis has decided to tackle this question head on. With Category: Woman Ellis, an Olympian herself, follows four female champions directly affected by this human rights-violating ruling. (Unsurprisingly all are women of color from the Global South, three from Africa and one from India.) While also tracing the misogynistic history of policing women’s bodies under the flimsy fig leaf of defending the honor of the fairer sex. Filmmaker caught up with the veteran Hot Docs director (2019’s Toxic Beauty) just after the film’s May 2nd world premiere in the Persister program of this year’s edition. (Category: Woman continues to stream virtually for the duration of the fest through Hot Docs at Home, though geo-blocked to Canada.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Who Does Visibility Serve and Who Does it Harm?”: Chase Joynt and Morgan M. Page on Their Sundance Doc Framing Agnes

Framing Agnes, the title of Chase Joynt’s (No Ordinary Man) latest genre-queering film – world premiering in the Next section at this year’s Sundance – refers to a controversial trans woman who, in the 1960s, participated in a groundbreaking gender health research study at UCLA. It also refers to the fact that, historically, trans people have never been allowed to leave the frame. Or, paradoxically, enter the frame (if not a blond beauty like Agnes or Christine Jorgensen). So how does Joynt place Agnes in his cinematic frame without framing her? The answer is with an abundance of artistic ingenuity and a little help from his friends. (Who happen to be deep-thinking trans stars , including Zackary Drucker, who plays Agnes, Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, Max Wolf Valerio, Silas Howard, and Stephen Ira.) Just prior to the film’s (January 22) virtual debut Filmmaker reached out to Joynt and his co-writer Morgan M. Page (the London-based creator of the trans history podcast “One From the Vaults,” and EP of the Wondery investigative podcast series “Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Rivera”) to find out how they learned about Agnes and came up with the docu-fiction’s innovative talk show element, and whether gender fluidity might soon usher in a golden age of genre fluidity.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

"I Wanted To Go Deeper Than Just a Portrait of a Band”: Rita Baghdadi on her Sundance-Premiering doc Sirens

Trying to make it as a twenty-something in a band is hard enough. But when that band is Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s first all-female metal group, the stakes and the obstacles can seem off the charts. Which is exactly what makes Moroccan-American director and cinematographer Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens, world-premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance, so engrossing. The film focuses on the band’s co-founders and guitarists Lilas and Shery, who over the course of a brisk 78 minutes navigate friendship and sexuality, artistic vision and international fame – all within the explosive confines of Lebanon’s often misogynistic and homophobic society. (And then the Port of Beirut literally blows up.) Luckily, Filmmaker got the chance to catch up with Baghdadi (My Country No More) just prior to the doc’s January 23rd debut to learn all about Sirens and Slave to Sirens – and creating an environment in which Arab women can become the stars of their own true stories.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.