Ongoing film series "Drag of Genre" explores queer cinema, acting as a measure of both evolution and stability, capturing the interplay between change and continuity, diachrony and synchrony, and the blending of past and present. “Drag of Genre” aims to establish relationships between queer performance and marginalized political histories that have been overlooked or rejected.
Leilah Weinraub, 2018, USA, 70 min
Sonic Redemption, Homecoming & Drag of Genre
Charting the eight-year run of Shakedown, a peripatetic black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, director Leilah Weinraub attempts “to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.” Weinraub presents a world unto itself, shaped by the desires and pleasures of its community. Shot with the tenderness of a home movie, SHAKEDOWN captures the propulsive, dreamlike atmosphere of the club and achieves a stunning intimacy with its subjects.
Two films, Anthem & Tongues Untied by Fort Worth-born filmmaker Marlon Riggs.
Snapshots of the Black South, Homecoming & Drag of Genre
Marlon Riggs, USA, 68 mins (Total)
Anthem (1992)
A collage of erotic images and a call to arms, with a feverish hip-hop energy that celebrates the lives of African American men.
Tongues Untied (1988)
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act.
Dimensions: When the Apocalypse is Over Shorts Block Total Runtime: 72 min
I get so sad sometimes
Trishtan Perez, Philippines, 2021, 20 min
In the small town of Pagadian, a gay teenager eagerly waits for a mature man to finally reveal his face after developing an anonymous sexual relationship with him online.
Gossips of Cicadidae
Vahn Leinard Pascual, Philippines, 2022, 18 min
Forced by his father to become the next folk healer of their town, a boy secretly despises his conventional boring life not until he falls in love with a Tikbalang (A Philippine mythical humanoid creature that has a head and hooves of a horse).
Somewhere a Destination
Celeste Lapida, Philippines, 2021, 8 min
When a body looks around a space and notices all the wrong things about it, in its rigidness and straight lines, a body starts to desire.
The river that never ends
JT Trinidad, Philippines, 2022, 19 min
Along a river that undergoes a major change, Baby, a middle-aged transwoman, shuttles between her job as a companion-for-hire for strangers and her duty to her father. As the people around Baby start to disappear, she realizes that she has been left behind in a stagnating city.
CYBERGRIME is a disgusting erotic nightmare lovingly extracted from the fiber optic cable lodged in the slimiest depths of your brain. Oversaturated and underexposed: 8 twisted short films plus original glitch art form this breakneck 62-minute collection of hypersleazy technophilic homo-depravity. Content Advisory: extreme sexual violence, murder, suicide, gore, nudity, bodily fluids, substance abuse. FREE SCREENING!
* = contains flashing lights
ANNIHILATOR*
Directed by Kyle Mangione-Smith (9:24 / Los Angeles, USA)
A nihilistic young man develops an obsession with snuff films on the internet. With few prospects in his increasingly bleak life, his obsession begins to take on a new dimension: a desire to star in his own.
1-888-5-BLUE-YOU
Directed by Eric Griffin & Jake McClellan (8:06 / Lancaster, USA)
Witness the tragic decline of a cult star turned phone sex operator named Monster Girl. Call 1-888-5-BLUE-YOU… she will actually pick up, seriously.
UN PD AVEC PC
Directed by Roland Lauth (11:15 / Berlin, DE)
An experiment in abstract pornography rendered in glittery, crisp, mind-bending 3D animation.
BLACK PILL
Directed by Jessi Gaston (10:43 / Chicago, USA)
A NEET with a wretched fetish fulfills their wildest dreams with the help of a camgirl and a baggie of mystery pills they bought online.
A.I. MAMA*
Directed by Asuka Lin (4:53 / Los Angeles, USA)
In this post-cyberpunk Super 8 film, Kei feeds their own diary entries into a homemade AI in an attempt to reconnect with their lost mother.
S.I.D.S
Directed by Louise Weard (6:11 / Vancouver, CA)
After being denied an orchiectomy by their doctor, The Patient turns to a back-alley procedure at a seedy motel. Unfortunately, their testicles won't be as easy to control as they thought.
MONSTERDYKË
Directed by Kaye Adelaide (4:26 / Montreal, CA)
A slimy 16mm puppetry romp that dares to ask the question: what if Pygmalion was a goth trans lesbian?
PURE FILTH*
Directed by Ty Williams (6:59 / Milwaukee, USA)
A nightcore-esque fever dream of imagined 2D spaces and shock site video titles.
Jess Franco, 1971, Spain, 89 min
The Thirst for Blood & Drag of Genre
From the filmmaker whom the Vatican once called “the most dangerous director in the world”, this retelling of the "Dracula's Guest" story has gained a following over the decades via its erotic flights of surreal imagery, psychedelic soundtrack, and iconic performance by Franco muse Soledad Miranda as the Countess.
Ewa Stoemberg (SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY) stars as Linda, a woman with recurring dreams about a woman seducing her. When Linda’s sent to an island off the coast of Istanbul, she meets the very Countess of those dreams. After quickly falling under the woman’s spell, Linda finds she’s not the only one with an obsession for the Countess. With a thin plot to roll with, Franco creates dazzling scenes of arty softcore bliss infused with psycho-sexadelic tunes.
J. C. Cricket, 1975, USA, 60 min
All hell breaks loose when John’s last-minute anniversary gift inadvertently causes his younger lover Jim to become possessed by a SEX DEMON who wreaks havoc on New York's gay cruising spots. Openly inspired by both THE EXORCIST and its Blaxploitation cousin, ABBY, J. C. Cricket's SEX DEMON is a ferocious mix of the erotic and the grotesque that’s primed and ready to shock audiences again after being lost for the past forty years. In the words of Gay Scene critic Bruce King, “the squeamish may not want to watch, but if you do, you won’t forget it!”
Last screened theatrically in 1981 and never released on home video, SEX DEMON is a crucial—yet long-lost—piece of queer horror history that's been preserved in 2K from a recently discovered 16mm release print.
Cheryl Dunye, 1996, USA, 83 min
Friends Forever: Female Friendship Canon & Homecoming & Drag of Genre
Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.