Film Categories: history

  • Between Two Cinemas Part 2

    For the past thirty years filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman has cut a winding path between classic international cinema and the American avant-garde. In this riveting but completely unclassifiable work, he looks back at a life in the cinema and an indescribable divide at the heart of it. Part biography, part clip essay, part abstract painting, “Between Two Cinemas” integrates 4K restorations of his old films inside a new documentary/essay linking them. It uncovers previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky, and adds new collaborations with artists including visionary experimentalist Bruce Baillie, Jeanne Dielman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Bela Tarr…

  • Drag Race

    A public three-event race in high heels and improvised monologue about all things political from pro-choice philosophies, the glass ceiling, the history of high heels, vandalism and gentrification, buying locally and seasonally, going vegan, sexual health and gender diversity. Participation was highly encouraged and pre-race makeovers were often held at my apartment. This is a document of the 10th annual drag race.

  • IF YOU MEET ME ON THE ROAD

    Performance intervention in response to the shooting death of Brazilian national and British resident Jean Charles de Menezes by London police in a tube station July 22, 2005 on suspicion of terrorist activity.

  • On The Department Of Experiential Medicine II

    Initially an anti-gay marriage performance in a veil, speedo and heels reciting the Litanies of Satan, singing a Galasian Amazing Grace and then upending a bottle of champagne into my prelubed anus where the pressure pushed its contents inside. I then evacuate into two glasses and toast with someone from the audience. It then changed into a DIY AIDS-meds Cocktail performance with me dressed as a nurse, juicing beets and pushing vitamin supplements into my anus before taking the champagne. I then evacuate it into glasses with the beet juice and toast the audience with these cocktails.

  • premièrement comme tragédie

    With a friend we play a game, negotiating sex and risk but providing only evasive deflection and questions. My friend and I negotiate with each other, I to him in French and him to me in English. We fuck. The scene plays again, simultaneously but we play the role of the other person. Him to me in French and me to him in English. We switch roles. The negotiation scene and subsequent sex act are transcribed and we learn each other’s part and switch roles. The two tapes are then layered onto each other so both scenes play out simultaneously.…

  • Cross Examination

    A short film by Lori Hiris about the Clarence A. Thomas-Anita F. Hill hearings. The camera remains fixed on the eyes of a black woman who occasionally sheds tears while portions of testimony from the hearings are heard. A statement about feminism and race accompanies the closing titles.

  • Queer Camp Trilogy

    The Queer Camp Trilogy is a series of experimental films exploring the hidden dimensions of queer Japanese American wartime history. This trilogy, made up of Looking For Jiro (2011), Warning Shot (2016), and On the Line (2018), was inspired by first-generation Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by the US government during World War II. These subjects left subtle yet discernible traces of same-sex intimacy or gender nonconformity in the archive, despite the enormous pressure put upon Japanese Americans to accept their imprisonment quietly, prove their patriotic loyalty, and smile for Ansel Adams during their unlawful imprisonment. I approached their enigmatic…

  • Trans Cabaret

    “Trans Cabaret” is half hour long “edutainment” cabaret of sketches about “all things trans”, performed by members of the trans community for the purposes of bringing “translightenment to the masses”. The video also goes behind the scenes to show the performers coping with being homeless, dealing with transphobia in the shelter system, telling parents about being trans and dealing with abusive partners. During the cabaret the performers rehearse tongue-in-cheek sketches by “characters” in the cabaret. The video demonstrates through the cabaret an open attitude about the basics of gender reassignment surgery, gender identities and orientations, the myths and realities of…

  • Audrey’s Beard

    “Audrey’s Beard” was shot on my beloved Bolex camera. The film was conceived as a time-lapse documentary film experiment with shots of this once butch dyke filmmaker’s beard growing in over a 21-day period in the early 1990’s. At the time it felt like it was a very transgressive act as an artist, transitioning gender, to grow the beard I had felt ashamed of for so many years, using my body to tell a story, coming to terms with the shame of being born Intersex in a creative and empowering way. Ten years later, in 2001, a potent voice over…

  • Great Dismal Swamp

    Contact and underwater microphones are combined with 16mm film to portray the landscape of the Great Dismal Swamp. Once upon a time, George Washington drained it. Then it became the largest refuge for escaped slaves in the US. Edgar Allen Poe hung a picture of it on his wall. Robert Frost went there to commit a romantic suicide, but didn’t.