Shobiz News/Blog Posts

April 2026

Posted on by krissy

Hello Friends!   Thanks for checking on my website, I appreciate the support.

The film i’m making with YaliniDream is just about finished, we are finalizing animations and Tamil captions.  We’ve started this in 2008, so like a very good cheddar cheese, it will be worth the wait.

28 April 2026:  My film #DaughterFail  about care is showing in London this week
This screening is part of Women Over 50‘s s Moving Pictures project, sharing the joy of cinema with older audiences in elder-care residential homes and community venues. – Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial St, London E1 6LS,

“ELOP is a lesbian and gay centre that offers social, emotional and support services to LGBT+ communities. It runs a free weekly LGBT+ over 50s social group and WOFFF is collaborating with ELOP, hosting a monthly film-and-discussion event. The event is 4:00PM – 6:00PM and the films and chat happen 4.30 – 5.30pm
Rebecca del Tufo will be the WOFFF host for this event.”
My film “My Crazy Boxers” was selected by Orso Caël to be shown at Bozar, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, but it didn’t make the final cut.  Orso sent me a very nice letter, and being selected was an honor.  I’m glad when people like my movies generally, and that one in particular is doing important work around institutional sexism and transphobia.
And here’s something fun: I made a film for my friend Eddie Hollis Edwards and it’s been selected to screen at Cinema Systers Film Festival this 23-24 May, 2026.

Spring 2026

Posted on by krissy

Fabulous News!  We are finally finishing YaliniDream’s short film “Butterfly Kisses”!  We’ve kept  this project going through the years because it is so important and beautiful, when we started we didn’t know how necessary it would be as well.   We are finalizing the Tamil open captions on this month, and hope that it will begin showing at festivals this summer/autumn.

Women Over 50 Film Fest – Moving Pictures screening in London

Posted on by krissy

28 May 2025 I was humbled and proud to be included in WOFFF‘s Moving Pictures project in Toybee Hall, East London, sharing the joy of cinema with older audiences in elder-care residential homes and community venues.

The line-up
WOFFF-ELOP LGBTQA+ screening – 27 May 2025
Over the Hill, Not Out of Sight Arianna Azzaro | UK | Documentary | 5min
Lovely Alice Poet Fox Fisher & Lewis Hancox | UK | Documentary | 3min
Topping Out Kerry Fox | UK, New Zealand | Drama | 16min
Carol Krissy Mahan | USA | Animation | 7 mins
The activities
– elop is a lesbian and gay centre that offers a range of social, emotional and support services to LGBT+ communities. It runs a free weekly LGBT+ over 50s social group. WOFFF is currently collaborating with ELOP hosting a monthly film-and-conversation event.
WOFFF Moving Pictures

Louise Siffert presents ARCHIVE OF QUEER FEELINGS

Posted on by krissy

Jan 31, 2025 – Feb 15, 2025
Louise Siffert presents ARCHIVE OF QUEER FEELINGS offers a selection of films based on trans-faggot-dyke sensations and feelings (weird, sad, fun, sexy…).A chance to eat popcorn in front of archives and works that are part of our heritage and that we unfortunately know too little about.

With Pauline L. Boulba, Lucie Brux, Louise Hallou, Aminata Labor, Krissy Mahan, Ji-Min Park, Sacha Rey, Louise Siffert (and other surprises..)

A group exhibition will be shown alongside the screening.
Archive of Queer Feelings pdf

From Production to Festival: Crafting Accessible Films with We Crip Film

Posted on by krissy

From Production to Festival: Crafting Accessible Films with We Crip Film

(written transcript here)

8 October 2024  Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) panel discussion in collaboration with the BFI’s We Crip Film. Moderated by Clare Baines (BFI Inclusion Partner), Charlie Little (Matchbox Cine, film exhibition access consultant), and Tara Brown (the queer fat crip film programmer). Topics discussed include access coordinators, including actors with disabilities, audio description, descriptive captions, funding for films and festivals, avoiding burnout, collaboration and resources for funding and increased accessibility.

Trans Film Fest Stockholm – World Premiere of “M or F”

Posted on by krissy

Thrilled to announce the festival World Premiere for my new movie “M or F” at the Trans Film Fest Stockholm.  My movie will show 30 March 2024 in the “Fun” program, Section 5 – FUN – 20.30 – 22.00.

Warehouse
Ahuatl Amaro, United States
A queer, Latino-Indigenous, warehouse worker must choose between keeping his job or standing up to his boss when his LGBTQ colleagues are fired for demanding better working conditions.

Hormonal

Maz Murray
United Kingdom

The Beach Boys
Milo Talwani – director/writer (and cinematographer/sound/score/whatever)
United States
Two trans surfer bros are on a mission to suicide bomb Jeff Bezos…but not before spending one last, perfect day riding epic waves and smoking dank kush.

M or F
krissy mahan
United States
The idea that there are only two ways to be in this world is untrue and dangerous. We know there are infinite fabulous ways of creating one’s life journey. I hope the metaphor in this film can help more people understand that trans people make the world a better place to be for everyone.

FAGHOUSE
Enzo Monzón
Argentina
Anjelica feels that death is near her, and decides to fake his funeral in a weird way, kind of a rehearsal. Birdie, her human pet, supports her faithfully in every one of her spells.

Sanaa, Seductress of Strangers
Jan Eilhardt
Germany
A cheerful tour guide shows us historical locations in her neighborhood, before her baser desires land her in a transphobic entanglement. alternativt For years, Sanaa has been working as a tour guide in the Berlin district of Wedding. But work is not enough to satisfy her. She is stubborn and trans. Her passion for the migrant men in the neighborhood, in fact, really keeps her on her toes.

Trans P.I.
Jayve Fleming
United States
While recovering after her unspecified surgery, Michelle receives a call for her services as a private investigator. She goes on a journey to find a missing girl, and has some challenging conversations on the way.

*Midwestern Last Name* Family Reunion
Elle Schwiderson
United States
*Midwestern Last Name* Family Reunion is a stop-motion animated film that is a culmination of my interdisciplinary art practice. It focuses heavily on how my identity as a queer person interacts/clashes with my familial structure and it all comes together in an emotional and existential rollercoaster ride.

pdf of program: Trans Film Fest 2024 – Trans Fest Stockholm

 

 

Asheville Fringe Arts Festival (North Carolina) showing CAROL

Posted on by krissy

Asheville Fringe Arts Festival 2024 laurels“A war profiteer with a gun takes a young working class woman cross country then chickens out when he (whoops I mean she) realizes that actions have consequences. What could go wrong????” Whose version of CAROL is aging better? This one. Lucky attendees of @avlfringefest the Asheville (North Carolina) Fringe Arts Festival has a night of short films on Monday March 18, 2024 and my parody of that schamltzy mess about a rich white lady behaving badly is on the program. The program is being held at the Grail Moviehouse.  #cateblanchett stop playing lesbians. Love me some #FringeFestival and wish I could attend.

Monday March 18, 2024  9:00pm
Program:

VERTIGO by Maison Mouton Noir (France)
Fish by Sara Bolandakhtar (Iran)
Carol by Krissy Mahan (United States)
DIVINATION by Eric Thornabar (United States)
Dove by Igor Gladkov (Russia)
Musical Television by David Wightman & Jacob Ciocci (United States)
Sincopat by Pol Diggler (Spain)

Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Helsinki, Finland

Posted on by krissy
Baltic Circle Theatre Festival is an international festival for contemporary theatre and performance organised annually in November in Helsinki. Next edition is the 20th and it takes place in Helsinki from 17 to 25 November 2023.

Remi Vesala:  showroom: worldly portals

this room is filled with tension between life and becoming
(they are rewriting a ghost story)

showroom is a metamorphic event concept, where different ways of watching and listening together are experimented with. The edition titled worldly portals is an evening consisting of a curated screening of moving-image works, short films and a live music performance by Niña Sombra.

List of short films shown during the evening

marlow magdalene: Velvet Rain (2019)
duration: approx. 7 min
language: English

The undead are watching you, Suzan. Run, Suzie, run. This conceptual zombie collage centers the eminent violence Black folk experience amidst white surveillance.

krissy mahan: When a Butch Dyke Dies (2014)
duration: 2 min 11 s
language: English

What happens to butch dykes when their health fails and/or they die? There are some things that need to be considered in advance (cocks, exes, underwear…). I made this as a way to make light of a near-death illness.

krissy mahan: My Crazy Boxers (2013)
duration: 8 min
language: English

Institutional violence is sometimes hard to name because it has been normalized as neutral. But people experiencing it know that living “between checkboxes” can be a life or death matter. The film re-enacts a conversation based on actual meetings with hospital staff while in a psychiatric hospital system.

The film contains instances of queer- and transphobic attitudes of the medical industry, invalidation from the medical community and refers to an suicide attempt. These may be distressing or triggering for some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS: We Come With Nothing (2023)
duration: 30 min
language: English
subtitles: English

We Come With Nothing is a film reimagining the 2021 stagework of the same name. Inspired by ‘constellation novels’ and ghost stories, it conjures a shadow world of broken connections. What happens when a relationship ends in estrangement? What do we discover when we stare into this black hole?

 

Niña Sombra floods the spaces every time their machines start generating sounds taking every breath below the soil, blindfolded stepping forward the secret passages.

Remi Vesala is a freelance curator living in Helsinki. Vesala takes situations and places as starting points for curatorial work, aiming to make space for complexity, theory and emotions. Vesala shares an artistic practice together with visual artist Jade Kallio. Together they make experimental short films focusing on queer eco-fiction.

marlow magdalene is a filmmaker whose work explores the transgressive space of Black memory, social death, intercellular trauma, and the underbelly of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. His work showcases a gothic, low-fi lens into a cinematic universe composed through dance, harrowing portraits of Black depression, and lyrical camera movement.

krissy mahan is a self-taught filmmaker who centers marginalized people, such as people with disabilities, working class and queer people.

ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS is a Queer art collective. Chris Gylee and Aslan have been living and making artwork together for more than a decade. Their practice is multidisciplinary with a strong emphasis on writing, film and live performance and involves elements of publication, installation, and curation. www.oncewewereislands.com

In collaboration with Mad House Helsinki.

Baltic Circle

Summer/Autumn 2023

Posted on by krissy

Hello!  It’s been a while since I updated this site, and the world has descended into lower layers of nightmare than ever.  My little movies have been out there doing their work in the world, it’s what I am using to voice my dissent and hope.

In July I traveled to the UK to attend FilmPride in Brighton. We marched in the Brighton Pride Parade through a storm, but all ended well in Preston Park.  Deborah Espect and team created a theater where the films were screened that was impressively cozy retro and made for a great viewing experience for everyone (open captions – yay!) The weekend before I was part of a screening and q/a at The Ledward Center where I ran into my friend and idol Kate Jessop.  Beers and film talk ensued!

While in Glasgow I watched Kokomo City at the Glasgow Film Theater.  What an important and powerful film!   In early August my short film Drew Adair was included in Philadelphia’s  The Film Collective Festival.  This short film is the start of a project that I hope will become a longer documentary film.

Most recently, “Rural Butch Femme Rap” was shown at the Appalachian Queer Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film, which deservedly was won by the hilarious “29 Hot Dogs” starring the hunky Brandon English.  It was really important to me to get my work seen by people who don’t have easy access to queer in-person special events. I was humbled to see that the festival had security around the building and offered to escort attendees to their cars if they wished.

Coming up in November will be my northern-most screening ever; at the Baltic Circle Theater Festival. This event happens in Helsinki, Finland on 17th of November 2023.  The curator Remi Vesala has selected my movies “When A Butch Dyke Dies” and “My Crazy Boxers.”

As I create my movies, this is what I’m thinking about

Posted on by krissy

Anti-racist, feminist justice requires creating socially shared affective receptivity, not merely ideological nor cognitive openness.

The fantasy of “economic self-reliance” is predicated on privileging white, properties interests and restricting public resources for their own use

Ethical witnessing seeks to make justice irresistible and white supremacy intolerable.

Racism is perpetually insecure and anxious, despite economic,  racial, national and gender dominance.

Depoliticization of racial struggles meant protest against exclusion and exploitation were reformatted as acts of crime against the nation.

Neoliberalism would have us individualize problems rather than make fundamental changes.

Justice is not a static thing we achieve once and for all. It is something that has to be persistently struggled for on the basis of shared principles as conditions change.

But we are comforted and motivated by the fact that at the very least, we try to abide by our principles. We do this imperfectly and always incompletely. When we try not to engage in the labor of hatred, denial, disavowal, guilt, and projection, when we reveal lies repeated by white heteropatriarchal supremacy, when we do not reject the fact that we are all complicit in systems of denigration and destruction in some way, when we do not shy away from our social and political responsibility to end oppression – that is when the process of struggling for justice begins to offer an unchartered sense of liberation, an unlegislated experience of freedom, and a mutually interdependent place to belong.

Thinking from my dear sister/friend, Dr. Paula Ioanide

 

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