Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies

Queer Visions: Treasures From the Nonfiction Avant-Garde

Still from Behind Every Good Man

Queer Visions: Treasures From the Nonfiction Avant-Garde
Friday, May 2, 6:00pm
721 Broadway, Room 674

Representation as an aesthetic and a political imperative has often dominated discourses of “queer cinema”. In documentary and nonfiction forms, this tendency frequently doubles in measure, wherein not only mimesis but factuality is privileged as the ne plus ultra of the practice. Avant-garde practices offer queer cinema a path out of this representational deadlock; where identity can be reimagined and renegotiated. Queer Visions: Treasures From the Nonfiction Avant-Garde embraces this expansive framework of queer reality at the junction of portraiture and destabilization found in five distinct cinematic voices. These works, presented in their original 16mm format, make use of experimental and expressive montage, found footage, self-conscious performance, and radical sincerity.

This is an in-person event, open to the public. Prior registration is required at least 24 hours before the start of the event. Non-NYU attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. NYU attendees must present their NYU ID.

Register here

About the films

Behind Every Good Man (Dir. Nick Elliot, 1967, 8m)

Elliot's short-subject document provides an uncharacteristically candid portrayal of trans life through the streets of LA. Restaging the day-to-day experiences of its main subject, the film weaves issues of gender, race, and everything in between the private and public lived experience. In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Print courtesy of the The Film-Makers' Cooperative.

 

Hookers (Dir. George Paul Csicsery, 1975, 25m)

Csicsery’s documentary profiles the San Francisco activist Margo St. James and COYOTE, the sex worker advocacy organization she founded. The film’s mingling of traditional cinéma vérité documentary techniques with comedic scripted segments challenge the discursive production of sex work by moralizing outsiders. This print, borrowed from Vinegar Syndrome, was first distributed by the expansive sexology organization Multi-Media Resource Center.

 

Both (Dir. Abigail Child, 1988, 2m)

Child’s personal entry into the canon of experimental works focused on the study of light, movement, and eroticism. Featuring the experimental filmmaker’s trademark motifs, her camera creates a contained masterpiece out of the ambiguity of gender. Print courtesy of the The Film-Makers' Cooperative.

 

Testament (Dir. James Broughton, 1974, 20m)

Working from the 1940s through the 1980s, Broughton’s oeuvre as an experimental filmmaker spanned the practice’s most protean and transformative periods. Throughout his career, Broughton maintained a distinctive spiritual and playful voice. In the autobiographical Testament, excerpts from his earlier works are woven together with a loose narrative of a vibrant queer life. Print courtesy of the The Film-Makers' Cooperative.

 

Whoregasm (Dir. Nick Zedd, 1988, 12m)

In this seminal work by Cinema of Trangression’s enfant terrible, hardcore sex meets the experimental through a fast-paced barrage of noise, cuts, and tongue-in-cheek juxtaposition. This twelve-minute visual collage lives up to its initial ban with Zedd’s still-innovative mix of found footage. Print courtesy of the Film-Makers' Cooperative.