The Varda Variations: (Re)introductions of the Auteure in Documenteur and Beyond
If I’m no good at pretending to be a man and no good at being young, I might just as well start pretending that I am an old woman. I am not sure that anybody has invented old women yet; but it might be worth trying. — Ursula K. Le Guin, “Introducing Myself,” The Wave […]
In Praise of Soft Cock
It was never the crude pestle, the blind ramrod we were after: merely a fellow-creature with natural resources equal to our own. — Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” The Dream of a Common Language. * As trans and anti-racist critiques of the now-iconic knitted pink “pussy hats” (worn at Women’s Marches around the world on Jan. […]
HOLY TILDA SWINTON!
“Holy Tilda Swinton!” These three words—proclaimed in the sci-fi series Orphan Black (2014-) to describe the arrival of a transmasculine clone—articulate the cinematic gift that is our most mercurial, protean actor: Katherine Matilda Swinton. At home in the sci-fi genre, Swinton’s grace is in her transformations, especially those of gender. Whether she is narrating Björk […]
Wet Hot Lesbian Summers
In 2015, girl camp finally had the coming-out party it had been waiting for. While touring her low-budget cult film fave, All About Evil (2010), Peaches Christ—drag queen, filmmaker and tour de force—turned her PR tour into an all-singing, all-dancing screening of But I’m a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999) along with Natasha Lyonne, the star […]
The Art of (Feminist Film) Work in the Age of Digital Reproduction
Some time in your life you will have occasion to say “What is this thing called time? What is that?” There’s the clock: you go to work by the clock, you get your martini in the afternoon by the clock, you get your coffee by the clock, you have to get on a plane at […]