Writers: Hayley Morin, Nathan Drillot, Maja Classen and Puck
Directors: Hayley Morin, Matthew Thorne, Derik Lynch, Drew de Pinto, Twiggy Pucci Garçon and Maja Classen
Mainly focussed on trans and non-binary people of colour, the five films that comprise the Methods for Facing a Hostile World shorts programme show the struggles that these people face in the world today. But these films are not gloomy in any means as they also demonstrate how these struggles can be overcome when a community is there to support these marginalised people.
The best film of the lot is the Australian Dipped in Black which is a mixture of documentary and staged scenes. After being abused in an Adelaide nightclub, Derik returns to his aboriginal Anangu community in ‘Country.’ He feels welcomed in his village, but the memory of a hanged man haunts him here; a noose, tied to a tree, gently moves in the breeze as the sun sets on the beautiful landscape.
Images of Tina Turner also seep back and we see Derik try on a gold sequinned dress in a shipping container deep in the outback. Matthew Thorne and Derik Lynch’s film is a striking film that mixes the ancient and the new and illustrates how the city is often not the place to flee to for acceptance.
In I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready, poet jaye simpson also returns home, to a town in Canada that they can hardly remember. Adopted as a child, trans indigenous jaye looks for their family, leafing through pages and pages of documents that make up their file that was passed over to jaye by the Canadian Child Welfare system. All they have left is these papers and a few photographs; jaye sees no choice but to move back to where they once lived.
Drew de Pinto goes further back in time to rediscover a pre-Stonewall riot in a San Franciscan cafeteria in 1966 that has almost been forgotten in the archive. Digitalising old interviews conducted by Susan Stryker with the trans women who protested at Compton’s, de Pinto shows them to trans and non-binary people of today and asks for their reactions after watching the Compton Queens. It’s a nice touch to connect the different generations of trans people – and the riot is re-imagined very elegantly – but you want to see more of the interviews with the women from the video tapes that have been so lovingly restored.
In almost an update of Jennie Livingston’s seminal Paris Is Burning, Twiggy Pucci Garçon’s short MnM is a glimpse into the Ball Culture of today, following Black non-binary Mermaid. Home for Mermaid, and their partner-in-crime Milan, is a loving space presided over by Mermaid’s mother who cooks big lunches for Mermaid and other members of the House of Garçon. It’s heartwarming to see; as are the scenes at the Ball. As the two compete in the category Butch Queen in Drag, it’s like the 1980s all over again.
The last film, A BODY LIKE MINE, is wonderfully shot but at 34 minutes is too long. Following the life of a Black artist with the alter-ego Puck, Maja Classen’s film is more successful when it is direct. For instance, it’s illuminating watching Puck perform in kitsch porn films, but other sections are overly contrived and the artist and Puck remain unknowable.
Together these five films show the importance of being accepted whether by your community or by yourself when you look in the mirror.
Methods for Facing a Hostile World is screening at BFI Flare 2024 running from 13 -24 March.
The Reviews Hub Score
Films of acceptance
