Introduced by Bradford Nordeen, curator, Dirty Looks
With filmmakers Chris E. Vargas and Mariah Garnett in person.
Image: Zackary Drucker, At Least You Know You Exist (still), 2011; courtesy the artist and Bradford Nordeen/Dirty Looks NYC
The New York-based queer cinema collective Dirty Looks heads west to copresent their program Yesterday Once More. The program features four portrait films (by Matt Wolf, Zackary Drucker, Mariah Garnett, and Chris E. Vargas), each of which looks back on a gay figure who helped shape or define a public image of queerness or homosexuality: Joe Brainard, Flawless Sabrina, Peter Berlin, and Liberace. The project highlights these figures and their (self-)representation through collaborative film projects (Brainard’s scriptwriting for Rudy Burckhardt’s Money), documentaries (Frank Simon’s The Queen, which depicts Sabrina’s first large-scale New York City drag ball), auteur pornography (Berlin’s self-made That Boy), and television (Liberace’s Valentine’s Day Special).