Activists on Screen: Queer Gaze in Cinema

This March, join acclaimed artists and filmmakers exploring trans New Yorkers’ lives for a screening and conversation. While sharing moments from the lives of current New Yorkers, this screening will provide a glimpse into spaces in the city navigated by trans residents and acts of everyday resistance past and present. Films include Atlantic is a Sea of Bones (Tourmaline, 2017, 7 min) and Pier Kids (Elegance Bratton, 2019, 96 min).

A conversation with Tourmaline and Elegance Bratton moderated by Anto(n) Astudillo will follow the screenings.

About the films:
Atlantic is a Sea of Bones is a short film drawing from the Lucille Clifton poem of the same name that follows Egyptt LaBejia, an NYC-based performer through the 80s, 90s, and 2000's in NYC. The haunting and otherwordly film set to an original score features small every day acts of refusal, resistance, and existence—such as performance and self expression—that have a tremendous impact on the world. The film reveals how the historical and systemic violence, like the killing and policing of Black queer and trans life, continue to haunt our contemporary landscapes and is inextricably linked to the ongoing AIDS epidemic and the black queer/trans spaces shaped so intimately by HIV/AIDS, including the spaces where we come together and make life together: public spaces and nightlife spaces.

Pier Kids interrogates the meaning of community, both within at-risk LGBT youth of color and in the larger gay community as well. Casper, a trans-attracted young black man, is left vulnerable in his pursuit for true love, all the while navigating homelessness. Desean is at a critical point in his life: he must navigate whether the best alternative to escaping homelessness is to commit a crime or become HIV+. Krystal utilizes the ballroom scene as a way to survive, but when her gay family proves unable to help her, she is forced to go back to her blood family for support. When Krystal and her birth mother are face to face, they realize that the only thing they can agree on when it comes to Krystal’s identity is their mutual love of gospel. Pier Kids puts the viewer in the skin of the pier kids it depicts, and shows what happens to gay youth when they are kicked out. The film follows these youth over the course of five years to understand what it means to be black and queer 50 years after Stonewall…

About the speakers:
Anto(n) Astudillo (they/he) is a filmmaker, performance artist and curator of trans experience from Wallmapu (Santiago, Chile). Anto works with 16mm film, video and performance to create moving portraits of personal and political themes, navigating dynamic interconnections between embodied practices and experimental cinema. Their work has screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, IX Festival Dobra, MoMA PS1, Frontera Sur, Ouray Film Festival, DocMontevideo, Mills Gallery BCA, Montreal Underground and others. Anto has taught film production at MassArt, Emerson College and Keene State College. As an independent curator, Anto has programmed at Performance Space New York, Anthology Film Archives, Maysles Documentary Center and international film festivals Go Shorts and Uppsala Kort. Anto programmed Trans+ films for the 35th New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival NEWFEST and was the Lead Programmer of the 18th TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival. Anto is currently the Program Director of Millennium Film Workshop.

Elegance Bratton is a filmmaker, photographer, author & tv producer, known for his films Pier Kids (2019) and The Inspection (2022).He was the executive producer and creator of Viceland’s GLAAD-nominated series My House (2018). He is also the author of the award winning photo book, Bound By Night (2014). 

Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Her films and photographs rewrite mainstream narratives and cultural histories to initiate a paradigm shift and imagine a more pleasure-filled future. Tourmaline’s practice invites us to fundamentally reshape our beliefs about what is possible. Tourmaline’s work is currently on view in Like Magic at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; The Irreplaceable Human at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, DNK; Artist and Society at Tate Modern, London; Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Activists on Screen is a new documentary film series examining NYC’s longstanding engagement with social activism, inspired by the Museum's centennial and our ongoing exhibition Activist New York. The series is programmed by Sarah Seidman, MCNY's Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism, and film curator Melissa Lyde, founder and creator of Alfreda's Cinema.