In their new book, Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema, critics Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay examine how trans themes and trans people have evolved on screen over the past 60-plus years. In an upcoming screening series running at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) on July 13th and 20th—From The Margins: The Trans Film Image—Gardner and Maclay have curated a selection of films that speak to the breadth of expression of their analysis, including works from artists as wide-ranging as American auteur Robert Altman, European iconoclasts Rosa von Praunheim and Alain Berliner, and groundbreaking contemporary American-Filipino filmmaker Isabel Sandoval. On July 13th, Gardner will be present for a post-screening book signing and Sandoval will also be in person for a Q&A with Gardner following a screening of her 2019 feature Lingua Franca.
From The Margins: The Trans Film Image
Ma vie en rose – Saturday, July 13th, 2024 1pm
Dir. Alain Berliner. France/Belgium/United Kingdom. 1997, 88 mins. 35mm.
Redstone Theater
A young trans child, Ludo (Georges Du Fresne), explores their gender identity and faces harsh transphobic fallout from family and community alike in wanting to express their feminine side. Ma vie en rose presents a message that remains sadly prescient for trans children and their families. Despite its essentially realist core, the film explores Ludo’s imagination with a touch of magical realism. For Ludo, it is through their Barbie-like doll Pam that the “the world as I want it” takes shape. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film, Berliner’s film saw its message and reach in the United States curbed due to an R rating.
Introduced by critic/author Caden Mark Gardner; followed by book-signing
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean – Saturday, Jul 13th, 2024 at 3:30pm
Dir. Robert Altman. U.S. 1982, 109 mins. 35mm print from UNCSA Moving Image Archives. With Cher, Sandy Dennis, Karen Black, Kathy Bates, and Mark Patton.
Redstone Theater
A cinematic reimagining of a 1976 play by Ed Graczyk, originated on-stage by Altman, this memory-haunted melodrama takes place in a Woolworth’s five-and-dime in Texas, just down the road from where Giant was shot, as the members of a James Dean fan club, the Disciples, reunite after a 20-year hiatus. As Sissy, a tart-tongued waitress, Cher gave a breakout performance among a remarkable ensemble cast, which included other Oscar-winners Sandy Dennis and Kathy Bates, but the center of the film belongs to the remarkable performance by 1970s icon Karen Black in the groundbreakingly sensitive role of a trans woman whose return to the site of her traumatic youth lends the film its greatest poignancy. Altman’s film deftly blends past and present via a brilliant piece of staging involving a two-way mirror, and the film builds in power as the women interrogate their lives.
Lingua Franca – Saturday, Jul 13th, 2024 at 5:45pm
Dir. Isabel Sandoval. U.S./Philippines. 2019, 89 mins. DCP.
Redstone Theater
Lingua Franca contains the rarest of onscreen trans depictions: a genuine romantic melodrama in the vein of Fassbinder and Wong Kar-wai. Writer-director Isabel Sandoval stars as Olivia, a trans woman and undocumented immigrant in need of a green card and caught in the red-tape of outmoded trans documentation. A home-care worker for Olga (Lynn Cohen), an elderly woman suffering from dementia, Olivia becomes romantically involved with Olga’s grandson Alex (Eamon Farren), a recovering alcoholic trying to get his life back together. They may seem doomed for disappointment—due both to historical struggles and former on-screen representations of cis/trans romantic relationships—but Sandoval’s film presents their courtship in a gently expressive and sensual manner that makes it one of the strongest trans narratives of recent years.
Introduced by writer-director-star Isabel Sandoval; followed by a Q&A with Sandoval and critic/author Caden Mark Gardner
City of Lost Souls – Saturday, Jul 20, 2024 at 3pm
Dir. Rosa von Praunheim. West Germany. 1982, 94 mins. DCP.
Redstone Theater
Eadical queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim always showed an interest in modern queer life and history in both his native Germany and abroad. His musical City of Lost Souls amalgamates those interests into an inspired, anarchic hybrid of real-life dialogues and testimonies mixed with exaggerated, kitschy, hilarious artifice. One of the best films ever made that centers the trans film image, City of Lost Souls stars trans icons Jayne County and Angie Stardust (fixtures in New York nightlife at SqueezeBox and Club 82, respectively) among its ragtag ensemble of misfits who live amidst the Cold War and come together at an American-run burger joint in a divided Berlin.
For more details on the series and to purchase tickets head to MovingImage.org. Film descriptions courtesy of MoMI.
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