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.”
Hello Friends! Please join me at London’sCinema Museum on 2 March 2023 for an amazing reunion of filmmakers and festival organizers. Look how far we’ve come! Since the first Wotever DIY Film Festival (my first one was 2013) so many brilliant festivals began, many of them connected somehow to the Wotever DIY Film Festival. My fondest wish is that we can all have some time together, and no one will have to be running a festival, we will all just be hanging out.
Here are the details:
2 March 2023 18:00 – 2200 (plenty of time to socialize!) Cinema MuseumThe Master’s House, 2 Dugard Way (off Renfrew Road), London SE11 4TH
Photos with Kyla Harris, Tara Brown, Theresa Heath, Charlie Little and Helen Wright at BFI Southwark at the “Busting The Bias Opening Night: Is There Anybody Out There? An Illustrated Talk + ECLECTIC: Shorts Programme, an evening celebrating disability visibility and filmmaking. 3 March 2023.
Hello Fans!
Well, my new year started with a a limp literally and stay-at-home/curfew. I’m working on a new movie (rather re-working an old one) and have big plans for more. I just need the time and attention. LOL
Did you know I have a show on Philadelphia Community Access Television? I try to show a mix of my work and international queer shorts. Here is a link to watch a sneak preview of February’s show. I’m happy to say there will be more puppetry in 2022! I see my video work and community access show as a way of defying what is usually offered to viewers through mainstream streaming services. I also love that is actually broadcast like I watched growing up.
My Crazy Boxers October 13, 2020Festival Des Cinemas Differents et Experimentaux De Paris (Focus #8, p. 51 of the catalogue)- a focus session (out of competition) around the theme “Dialect/Cacolect, atypical uses of speech in experimental cinema” which well be held at the Forum des Images on Tuesday 13 October 2020, Paris, France. November 19, 2020 Queer Animations screening with Toronto Queer Film Festival, Toronto, Canada. November 21, 2020qFlix Philly, Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Philadelphia, PA, USA November 28, 2020Yes! Let’s Make A Movie! Film Festival, Montreal, Canada.
I’ve been reading adrienne maree brown’s PLEASURE ACTIVISM and I’m hooked. Here’s a quote from the introduction: What is Pleasure Activism? Pleasure is a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment. Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to make improvements in society. Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy.
And here is what I did for pleasure this weekend! I played in the queer soccer league’s 30th anniversary tournament. I scored two goals! I have always hoped that my movies could be about serious topics, but presented in a lighthearted and accessible way. In these murderous times, I often feel like I am doing my cultural work wrong because I use joy/humor. Brown’s book restored some confidence that had been slipping since my days of close contact with Dr. Joni Omi Jones and Sharon Bridgforth, my mentors and teachers at The Austin Project.
Fear The Golden Girls!
Drew Adair, founder of the Philadelphia Falcons
Drew Adair began the Philadelphia Falcons Soccer League as a way for gay men to play competitive recreational soccer, and to reclaim the joy of their bodies during the height of the AIDS crisis. He kept it going uninterrupted for years through sheer force of will. I have so much respect for him. Thank you, Drew.
And now to showbiz news….
MY AUNT MAME will be shown this week: May 30th at the Bechdel Film Festival in Akron, Ohio is showing My Aunt Mame. I am proud to be in a Bechdel festival, and the movie certainly passes the test of centering women’s interactions. I am happy that it is showing right before pride month, as it is about unsung/unknown queer ancestors. Philadelphia’s pride march chose Ed Rendell as a grand marshall. The courageous actions by Black trans/queer/GNC people at Stonewall in 1969 deserve respect. I’m sickened yet not surprised that Philadelphia’s District Attorney while the MOVE house was bombed, who went on as governor to double the number of prisoners/prisons will be honored. Some people just don’t understand that the state and the modern-day enslavement system (prisons) are the biggest predators of trans/GNC/queer/Black/POC/poor people and women. Argh!
Also, I have been re-editing the short I made about 10 (yikes) years ago about a hospitalization in mental health facility, and how gender non-conformity can be pathologized.
After the Bechdel Film Festival, here’s what’s up:
June 6, 2019 MY AUNT MAME is screening at the at Curzon Soho, in the QueerBee Identity programme at 6.30pm.
June 20, 2019 MY AUNT MAME will be shown at 7:30pm at the Splice Film Festival being held at the Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn. This film is included in the “Comedy, Animation, Documentary” program.
June 22, 2019 I Am/YaliniDream will be shown at the Splice Film Festival at the Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn. This collaborative film will screen in the “Video Art & Erotica” program at 7:30pm.
Lately I’ve directed my attention to supporting Ayanna Ife get her Afro-futurist film project off the ground. She’s working on the screenplay, but has the whole story ready to go in her head. Because she is blind (and Black and queer), writing the screenplay is even more of a challenge than it is for sighted people. She needs a piece of equipment that will help her write and edit. You can support her work via her Patreon: Ayanna Ifeis creating poetry, music, essays, and audio/video content.
And here is a video of her talking about the project and encouraging people to support it.
What a great spring and summer 2019 is shaping up to be. I am humbled and proud that the cultural work my friends and I are producing is getting seen by wider audiences. Please support film festivals, they are a great place to build community and have your batteries recharged for the social justice work we continue to do.
May 11, 2019 FOUR BILLION REASONS will be shown at 16:45 at the Woodhouse Community Centre at the Leeds Queer Film Festival!
This festival initially had to be rescheduled, but the queers of Leeds are back to finish what they started. Relaunch Event! “We’re really touched by all the love and support so can’t wait to spend four days in a cozy queer utopia at Woodhouse Community Centre.”
May 13, 2019 MY AUNT MAME will screen at 7:00pm as part of Floyd Marshall Jr.’s The Film Collective.‘s last local film night at the South Street Cinema in Philadelphia.
May 15, 2019 ALL IN A DAY’S WORK 4:00pm Thrilled to announce that the collaborative film by Patricia Silva and me will be shown in the Workers Unite Film Festival. Our movie is screening with THE WASHING SOCIETY and DIVISION AVE at the Cinema Village22 East 12th StreetNY, NY
June 6, 2019 MY AUNT MAME is screening at the at Curzon Soho, in the QueerBee Identity programme at 6.30pm.
June 20, 2019 MY AUNT MAME will be shown at 7:30pm at the Splice Film Festival being held at the Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn. This film is included in the “Comedy, Animation, Documentary” program.
June 22, 2019 I Am/YaliniDream will be shown at the Splice Film Festival at the Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn. This collaborative film will screen in the “Video Art & Erotica” program at 7:30pm.
Toronto Queer Film Festival -Toronto
November 3, 2018 6pm OCAD UniversityCAROL 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.”
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.
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).
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, held at Cinema Detroit.
AND my parody movie CAROL will be shown at the 2018 Toronto Queer Film Festival. I am so happy and proud! Thank you to everyone who has supported my films through the years.
Hello Friends! Please join me at London’s 
