Fireworks. 1947. USA. Directed by Kenneth Anger. 15 min. 16mm
House Fuck. 2010. USA. Directed by Lark Hill. 6 min. 16mm
Jerovi. 1965. USA. Directed by José Rodriguez-Soltero. 12 min. 16mm
Solitary Acts #5. 2015. USA. Directed by Nazlı Dinçel. 6 min. 16mm
Remembrance: A Portrait Study. 1967. USA. Directed by Edward Owens. 6 min. 16mm
Less Lethal Fetishes. 2019. Canada. Directed by Theo Cuthand. 9 min. Digital
my body is a car. 2023. USA. Directed by Lucy Rosa Blanca Gaehring. 2 min. Digital
Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is Your Waffen. 1994. Directed by Ela Troyano. 27 min. Digital
Program run time: 83 min
This program of shorts showcases pioneering works alongside contemporary films, highlighting the ways in which cinema constantly draws inspiration from its past. We start with Kenneth Anger’s explosive, feverish Fireworks, which he made when he was only 19 years old, and which found immediate admirers in Jean Cocteau and Alfred Kinsey, making it one of the seminal works of queer cinema. Its exhibition was hampered by multiple charges of obscenity, and the ruling of the California Supreme Court in its favor is considered a landmark decision for freedom of speech in the United States. Remembrance: A Portrait Study is a landmark work from Edward Owens, one of the earliest artists to center Black queer aesthetics in film. Like Fireworks, recent works such as Solitary Acts #5 by Nazlı Dinçel, House Fuck by Lark Hill, Less Lethal Fetishes by Theo Cuthand, and my body is a car by Lucy Rosa Blanca Gaehring explore queer eroticism in formally inventive ways. Other highlights include Jose Rodriguez-Soltero’s Jerovi and Ela Troyano’s Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is Your Waffen, key works in the history of queer and Latino New York film. Jerovi is a dreamily erotic portrait of its subject, Jerovi Sanson Carrasco, seen here “photographed lingeringly in a lush garden.” A “sexual probe” into the myth of Narcissus, which has long been a classic subject of queer cinema, it offers up a reimagining for the “1960s period of sexual revolution.” The delightful Your Kunst Is Your Waffen follows Latina performance artist Carmelita Tropicana through a chaotic day in her life in the East Village, as she deals with a mugging, participates in protests and finally ends up in a jail cell along with her anxious sister Sophia and her lively friend Orchida. Directed by her real-life sister and longtime collaborator Ela Troyano, the film “wreaks havoc with cultural stereotypes” by combining drag performances, soap operas, American musicals and women’s prison films.