Gender Troublemakers: Trans Authorship, DIY, and Experimentation Through Film

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Gender Troublemakers: Trans Authorship, DIY, and Experimentation Through Film

Sunday July 21, 2024, 1:00pm

At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057

In person: Co-curator Caden Mark Gardner and director Cary Cronenwett!

Co-presented by Hollywood Entertainment

 

NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME

 

Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members

At  https://link.dice.fm/S59624d5735f

Guest-programmed by Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay (with Gardner in person) on the occasion of the release of the book they co-authored, Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema.

In the book Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema, co-authors Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay work to trace transness as a cinematic image- whether as a sight gag, abject, or well-intentioned but bungled humanization of trans people- to trans authorship and explicit narratives surrounding gender identity. In celebration of the book’s publishing, the co-authors have curated a film program with the focus on trans authorship and experimental film touchstones covered in their expansive book.

The 1990s saw the rise of film festivals, film spaces, and cultural production that intersected with third wave feminism, riot grrrl, and Gen X d.i.y. zine culture, offering alternative paths for trans and gender non-conforming visual artists. New Queer Cinema became the major inflection point of this era but there were other heralded ‘gender troublemakers’ who set the tone for trans experimental filmmaking and cultural production whose DNA are still found in the works of Angelo Madsen Minax and others.

Caden Mark Gardner (he/him/his) is a freelance film critic and researcher from Upstate New York and is the co-author of Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema. His work has been published in Film Comment, MUBI, Los Angeles Review of Books, Reverse Shot, and the Criterion Collection. 

Willow Catelyn Maclay (she/her/hers) is a freelance film critic and co-author of Corpses, Fools and Monsters: An Examination of Trans Film Images in Cinema. She has written for numerous outlets including The Village Voice, Polygon, MUBI, Film Comment, and Reverse Shot.

Cary Cronenwett directs and produces films that foreground forgotten histories and marginalized stories with an emphasis on inclusivity and process. His award winning film, Maggots and Men, (on Criterion Channel) was an epic collaboration with an ensemble cast that brought together scores of transgender actors and crew. In 2018 he directed a short, Chicago Love, that was part of the Emmy Award winning series ACLU: Trans in America. His work, both documentary and narrative, has screened in numerous festivals. He holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Originally from Oklahoma, he is currently based in Los Angeles.

Mirha-Soleil Ross - Interdisciplinary storyteller, writer, translator and social justice activist. She is widely known for her work in video, performance, theatre as well as for her critical contributions to transsexual and sex worker political movements and cultures. Performative texts published in Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales (Women’s Press, 2002), Working Sex: Sex Workers Write about a Changing Industry (Seal Press, 2007), Luttes XXX: Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe (Remue-Ménage, 2011). Political texts appear in Whore Carnival (autonomedia, 1996), My Breasts, My Choice: Journeys through Surgery (Sumach Press, 2004), and Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions and Imperialism (Women’s Press, 2011). Her work is featured in The Romance of Transgression: Queer Sexualities, Nations, Cinéma (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), and the Canadian Theatre Review (spring 2007). In 1997, she founded COUNTING PAST 2, (Canada's first multidisciplinary art festival dedicated to the presentation of music, dance, film, performance, and spoken word created by Canadian and International transsexual and transgendered artists. She received the Marion McMahon award for Materstina (Images Festival 2004) and Prix du public for Allo Performance! (Les Nomades du court métrage 2005).  Ross grew up in a taudis on the South-Shore of Montréal with dogs, chicken, cats and sewer rats as well as her illiterate but resourceful father, and a colorful, foulmouthed Métis maternal family originally from the Maskinongé/Rivière-du-loup region of Eastern Québec.