Tag: Wicked Queer

A Quick Update About My Writing.

Current Projects

Writing is coming along. I am still reading my current novel-length story. Taking very sparse, sporadic notes and annotations, currently just reading it to get a feel for it. After this reading, I will start making more serious notes, and then I will go through and do a scene-by-scene revision.

Complicating this are a couple of other projects. One happening currently and another about to begin. The Next Wicked Queer Fest happens in April 2024, but I will start looking at films when submissions open, on July 1st. The other project is a short ahistorical mystery that I think will come in at about 20K words. I’m closing in on 11K now.

Clearly, I need to make a schedule. That’s nothing new. Sticking to it will be the new thing. Yay, ADHD. But I think I will be OK this time.

Reflecting on “A Fantastic Woman”

Be careful! There may be spoilers ahead, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, but want to!

Later this evening, I’ll be leading a discussion after a screening of the Academy Award-Winning film A Fantastic Woman at the Bright Family Screening Room at Emerson College. I’m very excited to do this: I love this film.

I love how it shows Marina’s inner life without being overt. Much of this is shown directly through Daniela Vega’s performance, but there are times when the film uses a kind of emotional impressionism, such as the scene where Marina is walking against the wind and she’s leaning forward, almost parallel to the ground, still pushing forward.

I love the various ways the film represents her isolation: the cold, almost stalkerish way the camera follows her from across the street, or from behind. Even in the wide shots, she’s alone, vulnerable. There’s a time when she has, as nearly as we can tell, been entirely abandoned. It rains, and she has nowhere to take cover, so she keeps walking. What else can she do? Sometimes there’ll come a close-up, and Marina will look directly into the camera, meeting our regard, offering a challenge and a reproach.

A-Fantastic-Woman-Full-Width

And yet, she is saved by her allies several times in this movie. At the end of that walk through the wind and the rain, she comes to a friend’s apartment. They let her in. That resonated strongly with my own experience. A trans person who goes through gender realignment faces significant loss. I know of virtually no one who’s gone through transition who would disagree. But we’re also held together through our support system. Without that refuge, without people in our lives who accept us, we’re in an almost insurmountably difficult position.

A Fantastic Woman shows this to us. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Marina is unflaggingly determined. She despairs. She’s brought low more than once in the course of the film’s story. But she keeps moving and the world moves around her: often in opposition, sometimes in support, though it often feels like the opposing forces are stronger and more prevalent.

Ultimately it’s her own determination that brings her some closure and some peace. It’s her own strength, scant moments here and there of good fortune scattered in with the catastrophe she faces, including a few friends, that carry her through to a new stability.

Some of the movies I’ve seen about trans people seem to be directed mainly at a cis, heteronormative audience: fewer are aimed specifically at trans folk themselves. A Fantastic Woman speaks to all audiences. It universalizes Marina’s experience by placing us at times at that stalkerish distance, and at other times letting us look over her shoulder, and also staring at us levelly, through Marina’s eyes. When she experiences transphobia, no punches are pulled. Some characters in this movie are very up front in their hateful attitudes. Marina is seen as a suspect for no other reason than her presence and the fact of her history. Those who care about her are shown no less honestly.

Marina herself makes foolish choices, though we fully understand and sympathize with her reasons for making them. She is neither a saint nor a warrior. But even so, given the chance, she faces the ugliness of her circumstances and gives back beauty. When we get to the final scene of the film, a long shot that pushes in to a tight close-up, what is revealed through also exposes our own humanity.

What Happened at Program 1

Trans program 1 happened today at the Alford Auditorium at MFA Boston.

I had an amazing time. The program went over well: every film hit the mark, though I was surprised at the reactions to some of the individual movies.

People loved Calamity. It was funny, deeply awkward, and pithy. I love that movie, but I was worried no one else would. Beyond the representation issues (see original post with my comments here) it’s an edgy comedy. I didn’t know how my audience would react to it. I needn’t have worried.

The biggest surprise to me was The Real Thing. There were very few dry eyes in that house at the end of that movie.

I put my favorite movie at the end of the program, and that one didn’t impact the audience nearly as much as I had thought it would. The last couple of minutes of that film are just amazing. Alex Trahan’s wordless performance in that two minutes are the whole film for me, and they make it the best one. But it may have been too delicate a moment for a show-ender.

I will acknowledge that I was freaking out quietly in the front row about something unrelated, so some of the subdued audience reaction may have been my fault. I’ve learned my lesson; I’ll sit in the back from now on.

If I had needed to shorten this program for some reason, the two films I would have taken out got the best reactions. How about that? I can’t tell you what a rush it is to be in an audience full of people sniffling while the next film spools up.

Wicked Queer: The Boston LGBTQ Film Festival, Trans Program #2 and Sundry Addenda

By Saturday night I was screaming in pain…

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Spring has sprung, I think, in the last couple of days. We had the fizzle Nor’Easter, a few crappy cold days, and then, all of a sudden yesterday, things warmed up and the feeling of this place changed. When New England decides the next season needs to begin, it can be quite definite about it, sometimes spectacularly so. This time, it was like flipping a switch. No production, no fuss, just, “OK, it’s Spring now.”

I saw snowdrops today. They made me so happy. There was a big-ass pile of snow over them last week, and I thought we’d lost them for this year. But today, I saw them in the gloaming as I was walking home from the bus. The pile of white crap (well, black crap, really: this being Eastern Mass) had melted back some to reveal a small patch of them near the tree they grow under.

They’re so lovely.

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So, the thing. The thing with the dentist and the wrestling. Where to begin?

On Thursday, a tooth I had been neglecting started smarting a bit. So I called the oral surgeon I had been avoiding, and made an appointment for the following Monday.

About the middle of the day on Friday, with the pain beginning to crescendo, I remembered that this was an infection, and that having an infection when going for oral surgery was not the best notion. I called my regular dentist and asked him to prescribe me an antibiotic. The last time he had done so, he had given me these Penicillin horse pills, like 875mg or something. They knocked down my infection to nothing in a matter of hours. This time, he prescribed me 250mg. I looked at them a bit askance, but I took them, figuring they would work, since my dentist had prescribed them.

By Saturday morning, the infection seemed to be going down, but it was still raging. By Saturday night I was screaming in pain. I went to the emergency room. They prescribed me a different antibiotic in capsules the size of the horse pill penicillin and a pain reliever, and sent me home.

I took my pills, and slipped into blissful sleep. I slept for eight solid hours. Thank you painkillers. The next morning the pain was less and the swelling was going down. By Monday morning it was still bad, but not nearly as bad. I had no appetite: I really don’t like painkillers that much, lucky me, but I was taking them. I showed up to the appointment, was greeted cheerfully and without judgment, and a half an hour later, after the alluded-to wrestling, I emerged sans #19 molar.

From Friday until Monday, while I was waiting for my appointment, I was on my couch in the living room. I didn’t do much of anything but watch TV and look at Facebook.

I’m feeling better now, thanks, but I’ve got some healing to do.
And that’s why this week’s blog post is two days late.

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Suggested activity: Go back and read my first post on this blog. I’ll wait.

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So as you can see, I have some issues with executive function. No sense denying it. In fact, one of the main purposes of this blog is to help me develop a structured approach to writing:, with an assignment to meet every week. I set the posts in advance and the challenge is to never put up a late or empty post.

Oops.

But it won’t happen again.

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Enough of my dithering: let’s literally get on with the show.

Trans Program #2: Untitled

Pink Tiffany (44 min) (US) Nepali with Subtitles, English with Subtitles

I don’t know if this is an obvious thing to say or not, but the thing that makes a documentary work for me is a beating heart. This movie has one. Her name is Laxsmi, and she is principal subject Meghna Lama’s mother. Her inner beauty and love for her daughter come through so clearly on screen. I love Meghna too. She is this movie’s second beating heart. She is beautiful (Miss Trans Nepal), a committed trans activist (runs a trans activist organization called Pink Tiffany), and rides her scooter around Merrakech, She’s funny, and direct, and such a queen. Wicked Queer is the first US festival to show this film, and I am so excited that we are doing so

I Am They (58 min) (UK) English, Icelandic with subtitles.

I have been a Fox Fisher fan for a long time and seeing their film show up in WQ’s submissions was very exciting for me. I was not as familiar with Owl Fisher (so I probably need to catch up on a few videos, heh.) They are Fox’s partner in this film, as in life. Fox and Owl run one of my very favorite Youtube channels, My Genderation, and they are crack documentarians.

Fox is nonbinary transmasculine, and Owl is nonbinary transfeminine, and as the title suggests, this movie is about their experiences as nonbinary and as a couple. They both talk to the camera in an adapted vloggish style, but they are in control of their message top to bottom and this doc is very fast-paced, though not rushed. They cover a surprising amount of territory in less than an hour. The film shows a very strong documentary voice!

This program runs at 2 PM on Sunday the 8th of April at the Brattle.

Wicked Queer: The Boston LGBTQ Film Festival, Trans Program #1

As a programmer for Wicked Queer: The Boston LGBTQ Film Festival, it’s my great pleasure to curate short film programs of trans-themed movies. This year I put together 2. This week, I will blog about the first of them. I’ll follow up with comments about the second program next week.

Here are the films I’ve included, in program sequence:

Different: (2 min) narrative short, in French w/ subtitles.
A brief, narrated pace-setter, this film serves the purpose of a thematic overture for the whole program, encapsulating the issues that will come up throughout the set of films.

She: (14 min) Documentary, in English.
Often what attracts me to a documentary is the hit of personality I get from the film’s subjects. Tanesh Nutall, whom I grew to admire more and more over the course of the film, is an activist working in San Francisco. The first section of the film presents a view of her life there — her work, her relationships. In the second half of the film, we go with Tanesh to her family reunion in Rahway, NJ, a home she fled decades before to be able to transition her gender away from her conservative religious family. What kind of reception should she expect to receive?

In My Mother’s Closet: (13 min) narrative short, in English.
It’s a musical! There are a number of musicals in the festival this year, and I am proud to be presenting one as part of this sequence. A young woman invokes her mother’s strong presence in a phone conversation with a friend, whom she is trying to convince to come support a performance she is preparing to give.

Calamity: (23 min) narrative short, in French with subtitles.
Awkward, nearly to the point of horrifyingly so, but with a deft, light touch, this Belgian comedy caught my eye because of all of the strange visual juxtapositions and gags. It’s edgy stuff, but manages to give and preserve each of its characters’ dignity throughout. Note the role of Cléo/Calamity is played by François Maquet, a cis man. Generally, I avoid booking such films, but this one is so well done, I had to book it.

¿FAMILIA?: (15 min) narrative short, Spanish with subtitles.
A woman bears the burden of family in many different ways. Where Calamity has an almost sitcom-like feel, ¿FAMILIA? is gritty and carries notes of desperation. This familia is not on any picnic.

The Real Thing: (7 min) narrative short, in English
This film presents a nice twist on a very familiar current pop culture trope. Simple, sweet, and direct, I got the same heart warming feeling that the soldier’s homecoming trope has ceased to provide for me otherwise.

Umbrella: (16 min) documentary short, in English
Tells the story of four trans community activists/leaders. I found the inclusion of Mara Keisling, director of NCTE (National Center for Transgender Equality) exciting, as I’m familiar with her work. I hadn’t known the other three subjects of the film, but they are all compelling figures: inspiring and strong.

Pre-Drink (23 min) narrative short, French with subtitles
I’m so impressed with this film. Funny, sexy, emotional and intimate — it’s a stellar addition to our festival. The two actors give nuanced, engaging performances. Alex Trahan especially takes us to a place we haven’t seen before in filmed stories about trans folk. All through this film, we feel that underneath the snarky banter there is a world of feeling that never quite makes it to the surface.

This first program, which is entitled Family? will screen at the MFA on Saturday, March 31st at 1 PM. I hope to see you there!