February/March 2019 Showbiz News

February 21, 2019 Four Billion Reasons will be shown in Corvallis, Oregon as part of the Corvallis Queer Film Festival held at the Darkside Cinema.
Corvallis Queer Film Festival, Corvallis, Oregon

23 February 2019 Carol makes her QueerBee Film Festival debut in their FANTASY programme at Deptford (London, UK) cinema on Saturday  at 3pm
Cinema/tickets page: http://deptfordcinema.org/new-events/queerbeefest-fantasy
Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2321177251239574/

March 5-10, 2019 My parody of Carol opens the New York Feminist Film Week on March 5. The opening night film is  Bixa Travesty.  This festival is held at Anthology Film Archives. On March 6, my friend the filmmaker CampbellX will be recognized in an evening dedicated to his film work.  DES!RE (in which I appear)  will shown. On Friday March 8,  Patricia Silva and my collaborative film, All In A Day’s Work, screens on March 8th.
New York Feminist Film Week (NYC)

March 21-25, 2019 Four Billion Reasons proudly and triumphantly returns to one of the best, most progressive and trailblazingly accessible festivals – The Leeds Queer Film Festival, held at Live Art Bistro, Leeds.
Leeds Queer Film Fest (Leeds, UK)

March 21 2019 My parody of Carol will change the ways audiences view that dud on a night of a queer film night curated by Elmira and Ramona Zadissa, at the Arts Picture House Cambridge.
Queers In Shorts (Cambridge, UK)

March 2019 My Aunt Mame screens in their monthly curated film program held at Pride Films & Plays | Pride Arts Center.
Pride Films and Plays, Chicago

 

Winter Into Spring 2019

Hello and Happy Healthy 20 Bi-Teen!
I am happy to share the screenings that are on tap for early this year:

January 25, 2019   Four Billion Reasons (Dört Bilyon) screens in Istanbul, Turkey as part of the touring dis/Ability program “Un-Unashamed Claim To Beauty” curated by Theresa Health-Ellul.
Pembe Hayat (Ankara, Turkey)

February 21, 2019 Four Billion Reasons will be shown in Corvallis, Oregon as part of the Corvallis Queer Film Festival held at the Darkside Cinema.
Corvallis Queer Film Festival, Corvallis, Oregon

February 2019 My Aunt Mame screens in their monthly curated film program held at Pride Films & Plays | Pride Arts Center.
Pride Films and Plays, Chicago

March 5-10, 2019 My parody of Carol opens the New York Feminist Film Week on March 5, followed by the opening night film Bixa Travesty.  This festival is held at Anthology Film Archives. On March 6, my friend the filmmaker CampbellX will be recognized in an evening dedicated to his film work.  DES!RE (in which I appear)  will shown. On Friday March 8,  Patricia Silva and my collaborative film, All In A Day’s Work, screens on March 8th.
New York Feminist Film Week (NYC)

March 2019 My parody of Carol will change the ways audiences view that dud on a night of a queer film night curated by Elmira and Ramona Zadissa, at the Arts Picture House Cambridge.
Queers In Shorts (Cambridge, UK)

March 21-25, 2019 Four Billion Reasons proudly and triumphantly returns to one of the best, most progressive and trailblazingly accessible festivals – The Leeds Queer Film Festival, held at Live Art Bistro, Leeds.
Leeds Queer Film Fest (Leeds, UK)

NYFFW 2019 New York Feminist Film Week

The 2019 edition of the NYC Feminist Film Week is presented in partnership with WOMEN MAKE MOVIES.

The 2019 NYC Feminist Film Week presents its third annual film program committed to increasing the visibility of women and of all trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming filmmakers. Our program aims to foster critical dialogue among filmmakers and the general public, using queer/trans/feminist approaches to interrogate cultural constructions of gender, sexuality, race, class, age, and dis/ability.

Organized around the ongoing theme of feminist film genealogies, the series asks the following questions: What might a genealogy of feminist film look like in its ethics and aesthetics? How do feminist film practices function as forms of political and critical intervention? What strategies do they employ to unsettle and dismantle racism, heterosexism, transphobia, classism, and stigmas around sexuality, illness, and dis/ability? And how do feminist film and media practitioners articulate queer, trans, POC, working class, immigrant, dis/abled, and other marginalized experiences and identities?

Inspired by international feminist film festivals like Cineffable and the London Feminist Film Week, the NYC Feminist Film Week focuses on the social and material aspects of filmmaking, placing feminist film production within specific historical and geographical contexts while also creating connections among films, filmmakers, communities, and audiences across space and time. This year’s program focuses on issues surrounding sexuality with a focus on pleasure as a feminist strategy for resistance and community building. The FFW’19 line-up thus celebrates the intertextuality of film while recognizing the unique contributions of feminist film pioneers alongside new and emerging filmmakers.

Here are the events which include my work (Carol and All In A Day’s Work) and face (DES!RE).

Tuesday, March 5

7:30 PM
NYC FEMINIST FILM WEEK 2019: PROGRAM 1: OPENING NIGHT
Film Notes

Krissy Mahan in person.

SHAKEDOWN is the story of the Los Angeles black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis. Owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature, the club Shakedown is the darker, faster, younger iteration of this dance culture. SHAKEDOWN chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers including Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’ creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary “mother” of the community; Egypt, their star performer; and Jazmine, the “Queen” of Shakedown. The documentary is preceded by Krissy Mahan’s animated parody CAROL, which uses DIY techniques and Fisher Price toys to deconstruct class dynamics in Todd Haynes’s film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 classic of lesbian literature, THE PRICE OF SALT.

Leila Weinraub
SHAKEDOWN
(2018, 72 min, digital)Preceded by:
Krissy Mahan CAROL (2016, 6.5 min, digital)

Thursday, March 7 7:30 PM
NYC FEMINIST FILM WEEK 2019: PROGRAM 3: CAMPBELL X
Campbell X has been a key reference in contemporary British queer cinema since their first feature film was released in 2012. A romantic comedy about LGBT life set on the multicultural streets of East London, STUD LIFE centers on the adventures of JJ, a Black lesbian stud, and her best friend Seb, a white gay man. Made in collaboration with various queer and POC London communities and including street slang and patois, Campbell X’s first feature proposes a daring Black queer aesthetic while evoking the early work of filmmakers like Cheryl Dunye and Spike Lee. The feature film will be shown along with the short DES!RE, a meditation on feelings of attraction for people assigned female at birth who now define as non-binary, gender non-conforming, trans, lesbian, bisexual, or queer.
STUD LIFE
(2012, 91 min, digital)Preceded by:
Campbell X DES!RE (2017, 9 min, digital

Friday, March 8

6:30 PM
NYC FEMINIST FILM WEEK 2019: PROGRAM 4: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
Krissy Mahan and Patricia Silva in person.

This program explores the intricacies of community as a practice of individual and collective belonging, kinship, creativity, and desire. In TRANNY FAG, Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman document the life and the work of Linn da Quebrada, a black transgender Brazilian singer whose political interventions span both music and activism. The documentary is preceded by the short film ALL IN A DAY’S WORK, where two working class queer bodies stand a little too close for (other people’s) comfort, thus exposing the institutionalized assumptions society projects on both bi+ and butch women.

Claudia Priscilla & Kiko Goifman
TRANNY FAG / BIXA TRAVESTY
(2018, 75 min, digital. In Portuguese with English subtitles.)

Preceded by:
Krissy Mahan & Patricia Silva ALL IN A DAY’S WORK (2018, 10 min, digital)

SQIFF 2018 Notes

CampbellX and Krissy Mahan

SQIFF 2018 was a fabulous success!  I saw most of my queer film family, although didn’t have nearly enough time to just hang out with them and catch up.  But the precious time we did have together will always be treasured.  Some highlights were the World Premiere of Patricia Silva and my film collaboration All In A Day’s Work (2018), lots of discussions about accessibility at film festivals, and of course CampbellX (in photo) curating the Opening Night Shorts and seeing his new film VISIBLE.

I attended the shorts programs Queer Arab Lives, Unearthing Trans Legacies, Bodies and Borders (in which our film showed), Overcome, the Bishop Black Retrospective, and Gay As In Hysterically Funny.  I attended the discussions Deaf & Disabled Aesthetics in Film, part of Creating Online Content with BBC: The Social, and Meet The SQIFF Programmers (so interesting!)

Old and new friends at the Filmmakers Social

Between programs, I enjoyed meeting with other filmmakers, particularly Sonya Mulligan and the brilliant duo from CinemQ in Shanghai, who are both in this photo: It had been a year since I was able to travel – and actually it was to SQIFF 2017! These annual gatherings of trans-affirming, feminist, committed-to-accessibility film people nourish me to keep producing my films all year. I know that this group of people is exactly the people with whom I want to move into the future of film. 

 

We wanted to launch of All In A Day’s Work at SQIFF, and worked diligently to have it completed on time.  I know the film will do good work in the world, with such a send-off among good people.

Thank you, Team SQIFF, Helen Wright, Marc David Jacobs, Alison Smith, Samar Ziadat, Kate Adair, Leanne Dawson and Laura Wylie and (special warm thanks to Guest Coordinator) Lucy Rosenstiel,  – for creating a welcoming, rigorous, accessible film adventure for all of us.

Screenings November – December 2018

Toronto Queer Film Festival -Toronto
November 3, 2018  6pm  OCAD University  CAROL screens in the OTHERLAND program. The films in this collection of shorts combine poetry with experimental and found footage filmmaking to highlight the ambivalent prospects of representing gender, sexuality, and identity in cinema today.

Fringe! Film Fest – London
November 17th, 2018  21:00 GLOUCESTER CITY, MY TOWN plays in the London Fringe! Film Festival at the Hackney House, in a program of short films called “Rewrite the Ending.” Lesbians have long suffered terrible fates in the plots of film and TV that just can’t seem to let us have a happy ending. This programme of shorts challenges the common tropes to imagine what could have been, what we are fighting for now, and alternatives to the usual narrative.
Rewrite The Ending

Scottish Queer International Film Festival
December 7TH, 2018 12:00 ALL IN A DAY’S WORK WORLD PREMIERE in the SQIFF Shorts: Bodies and Borders program at CCA.
From the event notes: “The most urgent issues surrounding identity and oppression revolve around bodies and borders. In Being Okey, a gay Nigerian man is denied asylum in Switzerland and consequently caught between the constant fear of being sent home and hope of a life in safety. ABEO is an animation by Latinx artist Brenda M. Lopez Zepeda depicting the journey of two immigrants risking their lives to cross the Arizona desert. My Shoreline is an experimental film-poem about a disabled queer body in water, and My Own Wings documents intersex people from around the world. Working class queer bodies and class borders are forefronted in Krissy Mahan and Patricia Silva’s All in a Day’s Work and the implication of supposed sexual boundaries is explored in Patricia Silva’s bisexual ode, A Feeling More Than a Picture. Finally, legendary lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s new short, Evidentiary Bodies, is a plea for empathy and compassion generated through the viewing of other beings.”

Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street
Glasgow, G2 3JD United Kingdom

Fringe! Film Fest 2018 London

Fringe! Flings (FREE): Rewrite the Ending
Saturday, January 12, 2019 at 6:20 PM at Genesis Cinema in London.
Programme:

Pool | dir. Leandro Goddinho | Brazil | 2016 | 20’00
A stunningly beautiful and emotional story about a woman going to give her grandmother’s last words to the woman she loved in her youth.
https://vimeo.com/goddinho

Tales From Pussy Willow – Parents Chat | dir. Kate Jessop | UK | 2016 | 2’45
Coming out to the parents, with unexpected replies. Part of a satirical animated comedy web series set in Pussy Willow, which celebrates queer, feminist and absurdist themes.

Gloucester City, My Town | Krissy Mahan | USA | 2012 | 3’57
In typical Fisher Price style, Mahan depicts the continual encounters of what “being a daughter” means in her working class town, even for a butch lesbian.

I Think We’re Alone Now | Anna Dória and Isabela Costa | Brazil | 2017 | 15’22
Beatriz and Cecília are teenagers facing typical problems of finding space and time to be together freely as baby dykes in a conservative setting, so they wish to be in a place free from judgements and violence… and it comes true.

Nina | dir. Olivia Costa | Australia | 2017 | 11’44
The relaxed, drifting story of a young lesbian who is a sex worker with male clients, flirts with a girl she fancies, hangs out with her young neighbours, and is always just making ends meet.

REAL | dir.Cass Dennis | Australia | 2018 | 9’47
This is a film for anyone who ever became strangely obsessed with a TV character before coming out, with all the feels.

The World Can Wait | dir. Deborah Espect | UK | 2017 | 8’00
Vic is a popular lesbian character in a hit television series. But when the Executives in charge of the show gather to decide her fate, she finds herself having to fight for her survival.

Heal | dir. Eden Maslavi | Israel | 2018 | 3’33
A charmingly DIY snippet of lesbian relationship drama filled with chocolate, avocado decor, broken hearts and megaphones.

This is a repeat screening of Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest shorts programme.

Please note that this event is free, however they recommend booking your tickets in advance to avoid disappointment.

Toronto Queer Film Festival

I am deeply honored and thrilled to be included in the prestigious and radical Toronto Queer Film Festival 2018, held at OCOD University in Toronto. My parody of the Todd Haynes film “Carol” was included in the program Otherland, held on November 3, 2018.
From the program notes:

Carol
dir. Krissy Mahan | United States | 2016 | 7 min
Krissy Mahan’s Carol is a stop-motion parody of Todd Haynes’ 2015 feature film Carol (2015). Referencing Haynes’ underground cult short film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988), this playful short, starring Fisher-Price toy figures, presents a hilarious and necessary counter perspective to Hayne’s adaption of the queer classic/classist narrative.

 

 

TQFF 2018: Decolonizing Sexualities

Queer and Trans sexualities and genders existed in the Americas long before Europeans arrived and fucked everything up. 2 Spirit/Indigiqueer people have been persecuted ever since, not only by colonizers, but also by their/our own colonized communities.

Upending mere reconciliation into decolonization in the Queer community means re-centering 2 Spirit/Indigiqueer people. TQFF’s theme this year is Decolonizing Sexualities. What does a decolonized sexuality look and feel like? What are alternative futures for Queer and Indigiqueer people freed from Christian-influenced censorship and shame? If a Queer festival doesn’t have power to give the land back, how can we give our spaces to Indigenous people?

Exploring these questions and more, the 2018 Toronto Queer FIlm Festival features twelve screenings plus workshops and panels from November 1-4 at OCAD University. In recognition of our festival theme Decolonizing Sexualities, over 45% of the films selected were made by Indigenous directors, with another 40% produced by directors of colour.

OTHERLAND PROGRAM
 Undone
 dir. Erin Buelow | Canada | 2018 | 16 min
 Undone explores the troubled language of the tactile body.

Wheelchair Dancer – Kenta Kambara
 dir. Kenta Kambara & Nobuyuki Arai | Japan | 2018 | 2 min
 A portrait of Kenta Kambara from Japan, who made headlines in Rio at the 2016 Paralympic Handover Ceremony for his acrobatic dancing with a wheelchair.

Amour is love
 dirs. Hanna Che & Harry Forbez | Canada | 2018 | 10 min
 Mariana, Jodie-Ann, and Diane are three queer as f*** women of color who discuss their past, present, and future without any filters or taboos.

Carol
 dir. Krissy Mahan | United States | 2016 | 7 min
 Krissy Mahan’s Carol is a stop-motion parody of Todd Haynes’ 2015 feature film Carol (2015). Referencing Haynes’ underground cult short film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988), this playful short, starring Fisher-Price toy figures, presents a hilarious and necessary counter perspective to Hayne’s adaption of the queer classic/classist narrative.

way home
 dir. Lynx Sainte-Marie | Canada | 2017 | 6 min
 way home is an atmospheric visual and auditory landscape through which the artist shares deeply resonant poetry woven from love, pain and longing at the intersection. As we travel with the artist, we are brought on a revealing journey with tender memories of play, grief, abandonment, resilience and various other dissonant emotions the concept of home can invoke for Black folks in the diaspora.

Detached
 dir. Tiffany Rossi | Brazil | 2017 | 1 min
 Filmmaker Tiffany Rossi asks: Have you ever felt detached?

Idea of Me
 dir. Brianca Williams | United States | 2018 | 4 min
 A young woman becomes emotionally detached in her relationship as she struggles with depression and fear of intimacy.

Happy Birthday Marsha!
 dirs. Tourmaline & Sasha Wortzel | United States | 2017 | 15 min
 This long-awaited short film imagines iconic transgender artist and activist, Marsha ‘Pay it No Mind’ Johnson, in the hours before the Stonewall Riots in New York City when drag queens and trans women fought back against enduring police brutality. Starring Independent Spirit Award Winner, Mya Taylor.

Otherland
 dirs. Jan Pieter Tuinstra & Keren Levi | Netherlands | 2018 | 14 min
 Dancer Elvin Elejandro Martinez performs at a Voodoo Carnival Ball, an important dance contest where he will have to prove himself to be accepted by the local ballroom community. He remembers growing up on Sint Maarten, a small island in the Caribbean, and all the changes he has been through since migrating to the Netherlands.

 

SQIFF 2018

SQIFF “Bodies and Borders” Program

Thrilled to share that my collaboration with Patricia Silva has been chosen for SQIFF 2018 in their Bodies and Borders program!

The most urgent issues surrounding identity and oppression revolve around bodies and borders. In Being Okey, a gay Nigerian man is denied asylum in Switzerland and consequently caught between the constant fear of being sent home and hope of a life in safety. ABEO is an animation by Latinx artist Brenda M. Lopez Zepeda depicting the journey of two immigrants risking their lives to cross the Arizona desert. My Shoreline is an experimental film-poem about a disabled queer body in water, and My Own Wings documents intersex people from around the world. Working class queer bodies and class borders are forefronted in Krissy Mahan’s All in a Day’s Work and the implication of supposed sexual boundaries is explored in Patricia Silva’s bisexual ode, A Feeling More Than a Picture. Finally, legendary lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s new short, Evidentiary Bodies, is a plea for empathy and compassion generated through the viewing of other beings.

Recent Screenings – Summer – Fall 2018

Hello! I’m happy to say that my movie MY AUNT MAME will be shown as part of the 2018 2nd Annual Trans Stellar Film Festival in Detroit, MI on September 28-29, 2018

Recent Screenings

My Aunt Mame was selected to the 31st annual All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival (aGLIFF), taking place September 6-9, 2018 in Austin, TX, in the Dramatic Shorts program.

Queer Access Film Festival Berlin

Queer Access Film Festival
Aug 30 – Aug 31, 2018 Suedblock
Skalitzer Straße 6, 10999 Berlin, Deutschland

QAFF, the first Queer Access Film Festival, is an invitation to experience films with and from queer filmmakers with and without disabilities.

DAY 1 – on Thursday, August 30th, we’ll offer a range of short films and the audience-including Expert-Talk “The Democratization of Desire”.
DAY 2 – on Friday, August 31th, we’ll show three longer movies: “The Blue Wonder” by Uschi Bökesch und “No Day without Love” by Ines de Nil. The filmmakers will be present and available for a Q&A.. The festival closes with “Yes! We Fuck” von Antonio Canteno & Raul de la Morena. (My film “Faggotgirl Gets Busy In The Bathroom” was commissioned specifically as the short film to precede “Yes, We Fuck” when it was shown at Wotever DIY Film Fest 2016).

October – November 2018

Hello Friends! It is with a grateful and joyous heart that I am writing about the places my films will be shown this Oct – Nov. I am pleased that some movies that haven’t been shown much are getting out there to do their work. Here’s the schedule:

October 11th 6:30 LIKE A RIOT opens Gender Reel 8th Annual Twin Cities Film Festival at Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, Minnesota).

October 18th 20:15 FAGGOTGIRL GETS BUSY IN THE BATHROOM, as part of the Unashamed Claim To Beauty programme, plays in Hamburg at the Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg | International Queer Film Festival, in Kino 3.

November 3rd 6pm CAROL screens at the 2018 Toronto Queer Film Festival at OCAD University.

Tuesday November 6th at 7:30pm (Election Day) Pride Film Festival in Chicago: Pride Arts Center at 4139 N. Broadway The theme is “Queer Survival: Art & Activism Will Set Us Free.”  “Faggotgirl In Winter” will be shown. 

 

 

 

 

Monthly PRIDE FILM FESTIVAL returns on Tuesday, November 6

Election night special program on theme “Queer Survival: Art & Activism Will Set Us Free”

Chicago, IL – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Pride Films and Plays’ monthly festival of LGBTQ independent short films will return for its second season on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Ten films chosen from over 120 entries will be screened. In honor of the screening date on Election Day, this inspiring 71-minute program will explore LGBTQ citizen activism. Through dance, food, humor, protest, and the medium of film itself, taking back power happens in large and small ways in this night’s theme, “Queer Survival: Art & Activism Will Set Us Free.”’
 

The screening will be held in The Broadway, Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway, Chicago, beginning at 7:30 pm.


Click here for full gallery of photos, or on individual images to access high res files.

 

November 9th 7pm MY AUNT MAME screens at the Woodbury Queer International Film Festival, at TikiTiki. 

November 17th 21:00 GLOUCESTER CITY, MY TOWN plays in the London Fringe! Film Festival at the Hackney House.

And another glorious festival is on the horizon…

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