Mary Magdalene. 1991. USA. Directed by MM Serra. 30 min. 16mm
The Dance. 1992. USA. Directed by Jim Hubbard. 8 min. 16mm
Naked Boys Cleaning. 2018. USA. Directed by Jack Waters. 7 min. Digital
Belle de Nature. 2009. France. Directed by Maria Beatty. 11 min. Digital
Birth. 2022. USA. Directed by Erica Schreiner. 9 min. Digital
The Pleasure Garden. 1953. USA. Directed by James Broughton. 38 min. 16mm
Program run time: 104 min
The Bodyscapes program explicitly emphasizes the queer body, making it visible in ways that challenge societal norms, while also highlighting the infrastructures of oppression. Through a focus on the body, these works critique the systems that seek to marginalize and control, offering a powerful exploration of identity, visibility, and resistance. MM Serra’s Mary Magdalene and Erica Schreiner’s Birth are intensely personal examinations of the female body from up close, blending commentary and self-reflection. A look at queer life prior to the AIDS era, Jim Hubbard’s The Dance is an intimate portrait of the relationship, art, and domestic lives of songwriters and performance artists Dan Martin and Michael Biello. Maria Beatty’s Belle de Nature sees the imagination of a woman, Clara, take flight as she finds herself at the edge of the woods and “meets her lover; the forest, her mistress… Mother Nature.” Jack Waters’s Naked Boys Cleaning is a sharp “meditation on conflicting values,” examining the bodies of queer men as a site where Marxist labor values clash against the exploitative nature of sex work. James Broughton’s musical fantasy The Pleasure Garden, which Allen Ginsberg dubbed “a great testimony for Love,” takes a comic-poetic approach to emphasize the triumph of love and the pursuit of pleasure over the puritanism that seeks to suppress all forms of it. These personal and often autobiographical films offer a kind of cathartic release, expressing the pleasures and traumas of inhabiting a queer body.