MIX NYC
With stream-of-consciousness narration voiced by Gwyneth AI from Speechify, this video memoir captures the chaos, alienation, and ultimately relief of one person’s queer coming into being. Composed of cell phone videos and photos, analog photographs, postcards, letters, Handycam footage, and other ephemera from the filmmaker.
The single appearance of a heavy four-word phrase serves as the only linguistic matter in this work, which goes on to move through a series of semi-abstract images, suggesting the value of the non-linguistic in working through monumental feelings.
A young trans woman calls her mother for help translating her new poem into Korean. She asks: “You don’t usually translate. Why this one?” to which the filmmaker responds: “I don’t know. So you can read it?” That feeling when you’re ready to tell someone more than you have.
Frames from Donald Fox's psychedelic OMEGA (1970)—that “deals with the death and rebirth of mankind”—are newly suffused with a poem written by the filmmaker during a period of personal transformation related to sexuality, chronic illness, familial trauma, and queer ancestry.
An unrelenting score carries colorful, chemical frames and a disjunctive array of letters that don’t cohere until they do. But even then, our urgent central question is left unanswered: What does HEVN do?
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Quiet vignettes of trans life, love, and sexuality on Valentine’s Day, among a close-knit group of partners, lovers, and friends in Brooklyn.
The eyes of trans porn stars of yore are scratched out, suggesting a vandal’s demonization. But the presence of a soothing voice over, who delivers affirmations to those both on-screen and in the audience, refutes this characterization—or perhaps suggests the power of their coexistence.
