"A COMPLICATED QUEERNESS: LIVING FEMME IN A DYKE COMMUNITY"
Director: Johanna Buchignani, Emily Hillman
Trevor's Rating: 4 / 5 Stars

Okay, so admittedly I'm a bit biased with this flick -- this was my friend Johanna's (who attended SF State with me in the Human Sexuality Studies MA program) Masters thesis project. I've also seen the film before, since she screened it when we graduated. With that out of the way, this film raises some very poignant questions about gender, sexuality, and "lived" feminist politics (that is to say, the politics that play out in a politicized, queer community). I'm particularly interested in the very queer complications that arise in traditionally lesbian, women's communities when many of the community members transition to become men. This short film -- 17 minutes -- aims to tackle questions of a slightly different ilk: what's it like for dykes who like to dye their hair, put on makeup, and paint their nails (not to reduce femininity to superficiality, but of course these are some of the ways that many women "perform" femme). Here in San Francisco, however, those two questions are deeply intertwined. Hence why there is a significant chunk of time in the film paid to the inclusion of transmen in communities of female-bodied people. When she screened the film at our graduation, I was somewhat put off by the segment on transmen, which begins with a picture of a syringe and then a transman injecting testosterone. I think this tends to biomedicalize their identities and also seems to allude to a kind of artificial-ness. These qualms aside, Johanna is brilliant, and she's raised some important questions here. I hope she continues to explore them, in film or in writing.

"WORKING ON IT"
Director: Sabina Baumann, Karin Michalski
Trevor's Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars

This relatively short documentary (50 minutes) is obviously German -- and I'm not just referring here to the subtitles. The few pieces of German queer cinema that I've been exposed to have often tended to push the boundaries of genre, and are generally interested in exposing the film's artificialness. Last year at Frameline for instance, I saw a German flick in which the main characters paused the film and edited the storyline by deleting objects or even people on screen. This documentary shared an urge to remind viewers that what we were seeing was indeed a construction of a filmmaker, in this case by showing the participants (not sure what to call them, they were far more than just interviewees) setting up viewing areas where participants watched taped footage of other participants. How meta! This is all of course connected to the film's subject matter, which is an exploration of participant's stories and theories on how gender and sexuality are constantly constructed and renegotiated. It's very theory-heavy, without being particularly laborious. In one scene, a participant tries to explain her idea of sexual-labor using a lot of jargon that was even harder to understand in the translated subtitles. The person sitting next to her asked if that made sense, and the filmmaker replies "No, not at all." Chuckle. It also felt dated -- a kind of queer theory-driven extravaganza that would have made more sense in the late 1990's. It culminates in a kind of music video / art performance that, while vaguely interesting, didn't seem to move any of their arguments about gender / sexuality forward. I'll be frank: I wanted to hate this film. It rubs up against a kind of narcissistic psychobabble that spewed forth in the name of "queer theory," which many people mistook for an opportunity to self-indulge their egos. In short, I give "Working On It" 3.5 stars for its creative spirit, not for its insight.