MIX NYC

2024 films... 

Desire Lines

 

Travesti Opening

J Triangular (they/them) 2024, 19m, Spanish

In the heart of Medellín, Colombia, the charismatic and cutting La Tiana leads the Travesti (Spanish for “transvestite”) Gang. Strolling the city at night, their easy ownership of the streets is a testament to the potency of their friendship, self-determination, and defiance.

 

Blood Sisters

Helen Anna Flanagan (she/her) & Josefin Arnell (she/her) 2020, 9m, English

Abject and humiliating hazing rituals are used by fraternities to strengthen group cohesion and identity. Four older women try them on for size at a local rose garden, playfully extending these practices to unsettle assumptions about aging female bodies, their sexuality, and agency.

 

The Triangular Door

Dylan Mars Greenberg (she/her) 2024, 9m, English

Guy Maddin narrates a reality show from hell in which the last remaining survivors of an obliterated culture search for spiritual bondage. Shot on Super 8.

 

Even god

Liz Roberts (she/her) 2024, 11m, English

Druggy, intimate performances-for-video and observational sequences from the queer DIY scene of the 90s Midwest. Following her failure to sell the rights to this personal VHS archive, the filmmaker reflects on how to ascribe financial value to a record of such formative relations.

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GANGBANG

Christian Meola (he/him) 2023, 7m, Language

Six porn stars on a bed… and you. Surely someone will eventually make the first move and the scene will start—but what if nobody does? A stark reflection on our expectations for sex and intimacy on screen, or in other words: the pornification of our collective mind.

 

Isn’t It A Beautiful World

Joseph Wilson (he/him) 2021, 13m, English

A talent common in spectacles of queer selfhood is reappropriated here for different means. In lipsyncing Delia Derbyshire’s “Falling” and fragments of retold dreams, four performers—at once together and apart—invoke experiences of isolation, anxiety, and recovery.

 

The Living Wardrobe (L'Armari Vivent)

Martí Madaula Esquirol (he/him) 2024, 18m, Catalan, Spanish

When Martí arrives in Bilbao for an art residency, his clothes take up only a small part of the huge wardrobe in his room. Gradually, the wardrobe begins to fill up with Martí’s new lover’s clothes, leaving him to face his surprisingly strong feelings about the diminishing emptiness. 

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Belly of a Glacier

Ohan Breiding (they/them) 2024, 32m, German

Ice is one of earth’s oldest records of time, storing material memories in its air pockets. Here, an ancient ice archive is put into dialogue with a community-initiated project that literally blankets the Rhône Glacier from rising temperatures, and a queer, speculative glacier funeral.

 

THE CAPACITY FOR ADEQUATE ANGER

Vika Kirchenbauer (she/her) 2021, 15m, English

Unlike more explicit states of feeling (like anger or rage), ambiguous negative emotions (such as shame, envy, irritation, and unease) are often associated with blocked or suspended action. This film questions the political implications of emotions and the forms of action they facilitate or hinder.

 

Both, Instrument & Sound

Sharlene Bamboat (she/her) 2024, 40m, English

In the face of an increasingly individualistic political discourse, this work employs tension as an aesthetic strategy and calls upon the experiences of Tony, an 80 year-old queer elder. In recalling his long life of political activism, it becomes clear that such work requires true intersectionality, solidarity, and collective struggle. Shot on hand-processed 16mm film.

 

carcass(e)/ underglass

Amina Ross (they/them) 2023, 18m, English

In a fragmented, inhospitable world, a whispered voice and a butcher’s vivid account of breaking down flesh guide us through a surreal exploration of the body, its vulnerabilities, the oppressive systems that deconstruct it, and its quest for preservation and support.

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in the interval

æryka jourdaine hollis o'neil (she/they) 2023, 24m, English

An intimate family portrait and cinematic collage of Black and trans collective memory and (be)longing that stirs meditations on safety, bodily autonomy, and generations of compounding loss.

 

pappyshow in the dark time, my love

Kearra Amaya Gopee (they/them) 2022, 25m, English

An admixture of soca, noise, and techno accompanies a series of interviews where participants are asked: what would you do if you could have your revenge? This confluence of sonic alliances across Black diasporas investigates the potential of the call-and-response nature of Black sound for destruction and regeneration.

 

an excision spell

Kearra Amaya Gopee (they/them) 2020, 5m, Language

Riffing on the pedantic style of repeat-after-me self-help and meditation videos, the filmmaker addresses the viewer directly in this intra-communal call to self-determination and to renounce allegiance to whiteness.

 

The Treasury of Human Inheritance

Alexis Kyle Mitchell (she/her) 2024, 60m, English

A poetic film about living with and alongside disease and disability that traces loops, echoes, and repetitions across the physical and spiritual realms, combining home movie footage with celluloid film hand-processed in genetic material and an analogue synthesizer soundtrack that mimics inheritance patterns of genetic disease.

 

Endocast: A Non-Linear Memoir

Efrem Hawk (They/Them) 2023, 20m, English

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. 

Content Warning: This film contains themes of: Blood, Birth, Violence, Relationship Abuse, Suicide. This film may be triggering, or disturbing to those affected by these topics.

 

TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, some-times

Matt Whitman (he/they) 2023, 9m, English

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.

 

THESE KIDS DON'T GET IT, MA.

June Jung (she/her) 2024, 6m, English, Korean

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. 

 

Queer Dream Triptych

Matt McKinzie (he/him) 2023, 3m, English

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.

 

HEVN

P Staff 2021, 5m, Language

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?

 

February Fourteenth

Ezri Appel (they/them) 2024, 6m, English

Quiet vignettes of trans life, love, and sexuality on Valentine’s Day, among a close-knit group of partners, lovers, and friends in Brooklyn.

 

everything is ok | an ASMR to help you sleep at night

Autojektor (she/they) 2021, 5m, English

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.  

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