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Framing Agnes
Canada/U.S., 2022
Agnes, the pioneering, pseudonymized, transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history. In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt explores where and how Agnes’ platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed—one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes’. Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars (Zackary Drucker, Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, Max Wolf Valerio, Silas Howard, and Stephen Ira) take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans healthcare.
Joynt’s signature form-rupturing style radically reenvisions the imposition of the frame on the cultural memory of transness through his brilliantly crafted, communally-driven excavation. This reclamation tears away with remarkable precision the myth of isolation as the mode of existence of transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long. The film screens in Los Angeles fresh off its award-winning turn at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it garnered the NEXT Audience Award and the NEXT Innovator Award.
Following this screening, join us again on Tuesday, April 19 at 7 p.m. at UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library for a conversation on transgender, two-spirit, gender-expansive and intersex (TGI) representation, the history of TGI-related research at UCLA, and current organizing efforts for ethical, informed, community-driven and justice-centered research about TGI people.
DCP, b&w and color, 75 min. Director: Chase Joynt. Screenwriters: Chase Joynt, Morgan M. Page. With: Zackary Drucker, Jules Gill-Peterson, Silas Howard.
Special thanks to our community partners:
UCLA LGBTQ Campus Resource Center
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
UCLA Department of Sociology
Transgender UCLA Pride
The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law
UCLA Center for the Study of Women
Media partner: OutWrite Newsmagazine
Watch a trailer:
