Across Time & Space: Black Queer Stories (2024 shorts)

“Across Time & Space: Black Queer Stories” (2024 shorts program)

Thursday, June 27, 2024, 1:00 PM, Roxie

Streaming (except The Birth of Naikee)

Last year’s Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project inspired the name for this collection of shorts. Giovanni said, “The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.”

• The Birth of Naikee, dir. Clémentine Decremps, 2024 France/Germany, 20 min., in French and English, not included in the streaming encore 👏
• Chimera, dir. Kryzz Gautier, 2024 USA, 18 min. 🫤
• Grace, dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris, 2024 USA, 13 min. 👏
• Se eu tô aqui é por mistério (If I’m Here It is by Mystery), dir. Carli Ribeiro, 2024 Brazil, 22 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles 🙂
  🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: honorable mention, Outstanding Narrative Short
• Saturn Risin9, dir. Tiare Ribeaux & Jody Stillwater, 2024 USA, 10 min., also screens in “Homegrown Shorts” 👏

The Birth of Naikee, dir. Clémentine Decremps, 2024 France/Germany, 20 min., in French and English 👏

The Birth of Naikee

Naikee, a black transwoman activist in Paris, child of a father from Martinique (French Caribbean) and a mother with roots in Algeria and Spain, has started her medical and social transition, and has just come out to her mother. She and some people of diverse racial and gender identities come together to make their own version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (a.k.a. Venus on the Half-Shell). We sit in on the discussion as they develop the idea and conclude with the photo shoot. It’s beautiful and affirming in many ways, but honestly a little long. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other • Clementine Decremps

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Chimera, dir. Kryzz Gautier, 2024 USA, 18 min. 🫤

Chimera

To sum it up in a sentence, Chimera feels like no beginning, no ending, just middle. We jump into the story with the protagonist (in some not-too-distant future world) trying to fix a computer simulation of her ex, but being beset by glitches. When she’s not on the computer, she has conversations with a close friend and with her current girlfriend, but nothing that gives a satisfactory context for why she is obsessed with finishing this simulation. Not horrible, but not recommended.

• IMDb [director] • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

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Grace, dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris, 2024 USA, 13 min. 👏

Grace

Somewhere in the rural Deep South in the 1950s, Grace is spending the summer with her grandmother down by the coast. She is close friends with Louise, a girl who lives nearby, but Big Mama insists that she be baptized (again) by total immersion in the ocean. But in order for baptism to wash away your sins, you must first repent, leading Grace to question her relationship with Louise. It’s a poignant moment, beautifully filmed; highly recommended.

Film buffs take note: this short was shot on 16mm film.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

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Se eu tô aqui é por mistério (If I’m Here It is by Mystery), dir. Carli Ribeiro, 2024 Brazil, 22 min., in Portuguese with English subtitles 🙂

🏆 Frameline48 Jury Award: honorable mention, Outstanding Narrative Short

Se eu tô aqui é por mistério
(If I’m Here It is by Mystery)

In the 1950s, a colony of magical beings took up residence on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. The most powerful was the Supreme Witch. Then in the 1960s, the Order of Truth, a vigilante group, set out to destroy all the magical beings, mostly by stabbing them and leaving the bodies in plain sight. Flash forward to today, the year 2054, in Novo Rio, and the magical beings are making a comeback — but so is the Order of Truth. This story has a lot of potential, but it needed better development and better editing. There’s a scene near the end involving a magical portal that could have been amazing, but it turned out ho-hum. Worth seeing, recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other • Se eu to aqui e por misterio

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Saturn Risin9, dir. Tiare Ribeaux & Jody Stillwater, 2024 USA, 10 min., also screens in “Homegrown Shorts” 👏

Saturn Risin9

Frameline description: “Queer performance artist and musician Saturn Risin9 returns home to the Bay Area to share their journey of perseverance centering self discovery, healing and creative expansion poetically told through dance, visual narrative, performance, and documentary.”

My thoughts: You can lose yourself in the voiceover or lose yourself in the visuals, or bettter yet let both flow over and through you. Highly recommended.

• IMDb [Ribeaux] [Stillwater] • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • YouTube channel • Saturn Rising