SFTFF: Program 1
Prittyboi
Director: Nicolas Collins
Runtime: 4:03
“Prittyboi” is a docu-style music video that follows two lovebirds on a romantic getaway as they traverse the beautiful Bay Area. They go thrift shopping, play fight with ice cream cones and take in the Marin County landscapes. Pandaraps’, “Prittyboi” is a romantic hip-hop ballad about coming out as Genderqueer. https://www.nicolascollinsfilm.com/prittyboi
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Nicolas Collins is a Bay Area filmmaker and fine artist. He started his journey in high school making short films and continued into college, California College of the Arts in San Francisco where he received a BFA in Film. Post graduation he continued to direct short films that have played at festivals around San Francisco. He currently works as a professional video editor with credits in feature films, shorts, and ads.
Nicolas currently resides in Oakland, California where outside of filmmaking he writes screenplays, paints, travels the coast and attend underground Heavy Metal concerts.
If I cannot Feed all the Hungers of The World, do I still hold Value?
Director: Ray Isaak Bleau
Runtime: 2:55
The fear of never being accepted outside of my own sex appeal has followed me since I was far too young. As a non-binary demisexual person being often mistaken for a gender I am not and hyper-sexuaized for it, that assumption weighs heavier as I age. Because when I start to lose that “privilege,” what am I then? www.ribcagestudios.com
Gender Euphoria: Trans people in the Bay Area
Director:Alex Sharp, Mia Florendo
Runtime: 6:53
This documentary showcases the importance of gender euphoria, especially at a time when trans people are under attack throughout the country. In this documentary you will get to hear stories from trans people all over the Bay Area. This is a celebration of the joy, diversity, and community that queer and trans people have. https://freestyleacademy.rocks/~AlexSh/documentary/
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Alex Sharp is currently a senior in high school, and goes to school in the Bay Area. His interests are filmmaking, animation, music, and all types of art. He plays cello for the school chamber ensemble and is taking film production classes at a school called Freestyle Academy.
Auntie Chris Signs of Rivers
Director: Marrok Sedgwick
Runtime: 5:43
Christopher “Auntie Chris” Smith performs their American Sign Language adaptation of the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes. This silent film focuses on Auntie Chris’s artistry with their language, in front of a river with plants in full springtime green.
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Marrok Sedgwick is a multiply-disabled, hard of hearing, non-speaking queer/trans filmmaker who focuses their work on disability and queer advocacy. They are also a PhD candidate studying how Autistic people with extensive support needs learn at the Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago.
AT WATER’S EDGE
Director: Sean Dorsey
Runtime: 3:31
Featuring mesmerizing queer dance in watery coves and ocean edges, AT WATER’S EDGE is a short dance film by Emmy Award-winning transgender choreographer Sean Dorsey. AT WATER’S EDGE juxtaposes trans and queer bodies in motion with water — mutable, flowing, and ever-transforming. This short is part of a series of dance films created as part of Sean Dorsey Dance’s THE LOST ART OF DREAMING project. (Other films in the series include PLACE/PORTAL and SEEK/AFTER.) “Stunning…These films are exquisite, intimate, and radiate with Dorsey’s gesture-rich choreography.” (Bay Times) “Gorgeous” (48 Hills) Dorsey has been awarded an Emmy Award (“Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans & Queer Futures), five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and is a Doris Duke Artist and a Dance/USA Artist Fellow. Dorsey is widely recognized as the USA’s first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer. Dorsey’s THE LOST ART OF DREAMING project imagines expansive trans, gender-nonconforming and queer Futures. This series of short films featuring choreography and performance by the groundbreaking all-LGBTQ Sean Dorsey Dance company — and is an invitation to reclaim, conjure, and manifest joy, pleasure, well-being, freedom, love, connection, and liberation. The series features 6 short films: AT WATER’S EDGE, SEEK/AFTER, PLACE/PORTAL, SPELL/DREAM, UNFOLD/INTO, and SEEK/AFTER. https://seandorseydance.com/
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Sean Dorsey is an Emmy award-winning choreographer, dancer, writer, educator and activist. Long recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has toured his work to more than 30 cities across the US and abroad – and taught with his explicitly trans-positive pedagogy in more than 35 cities.
City Folx Episode 1, The Ads
Director: Rae Dawn
Runtime: 6:03
City Folx is a comedy web series exploring the theme of Bay Area housing insecurity as experienced by two Drag brothers. “Raq” and “Cin” are opposites who are forced to go to extreme measures to survive in San Francisco’s housing market. Dumpster diving, living with techie psychopaths and fighting with their evil landlord Phyllis are par for the course. In episode 1, Raq and Cin write an honest housing ad to attract a depressed roommate who likes spending time alone in their room. City Folx stars two real life drag brothers (Vera Hannush and Bex Salas), who’ve been honing their skills onstage as members of the Rebel Kings of Oakland. www.cityfolx.com
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Rae Dawn (Director) (They/Them) is a non-binary, queer parent living in San Francisco. Rae lived an early life as a train hopper, at-risk teenager, and musician. Rae is heavily influenced by a NW DIY aesthetic and the NY experimental art/film scene. Past projects include a documentary about Kembra Pfahler, singer of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and a personal experimental film about the death of a friend during the Riot Grrl era in Portland, OR. In 2021, they began work on City Folx, a queer, Bay Area online comedy project about housing insecurity, starring two local Drag Kings as a means to amplify gender expansive creators and performers.
CHIRON
Director: Rachel Rambaldi
Runtime: 6:16
A person is called by their connection with the spirits to go to the river in ceremony and in ritual. earthtojordi.com
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Rachel Rambaldi (she/her) is a first-generation Italian writer/director based in Los Angeles. Growing up in Los Angeles and her homeland of Italy allowed her to stay connected to her roots which have significantly impacted her artistry and perspective. Rachel’s short film, Cream or Sugar,(co-written with Sar Artoonian) digs into human identity within colonial structures and premiered at OUTFEST Film Festival 2022. Her storytelling focuses on the human experience through dark comedy and satire. The essential ingredient to Rachel is that her work bares the human spirit. Her background also includes self-expression art facilitation within the autistic, non-verbal community. At the Legacy Center, a non-profit organization that focuses on elevating standards for the neuro-diverse community, she founded and facilitated an art program that functioned from 2017-2020. Working with people who needed access to communication devices to express themselves deepened her listening ability. This opportunity gave her a unique insight into another layer of humanity which ultimately strengthened her collaboration process with actors. Rachel believes life experience makes you a stronger storyteller and has always pushed herself personally and creatively outside her comfort zone to gain new perspectives.
From standing on a forty-foot ladder to black-out windows as a G/E Swing to delivering vegan chilly up a snowy, muddy hill as a Production Assistant on an Indie Feature in Wales, England. Rachel was adamant about knowing how every department functions on a film set; she knew this would also be a key to more decisive leadership. While writing and directing her films, she has also produced micro-documentaries and brand films for Samsung, ADL (Anti-Defamation League), and the Gender Cool Project with Chicago-based creative agency Swissa Creative, inc. She’s a self-taught 35mm film photographer with a self-portrait published in F-STOP magazine in 2020. Rachel was the only student in her college class to direct a thesis on 16mm film. Self-starting has been her foundation since the age of twelve when she picked up a camera for the first time. Rachel believes creating opportunities to do what means the most to you is the greatest investment. Her short film HERLY recently premiered at the 2023 CinemaFemme Film Festival in Chicago and won her a mentorship with Stephanie Filo (Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, The Black Lady Sketch Show)
House of Enigma
Director: Slade Warnken, Ying Dai
Runtime: 11:20
Using gender and artistic expression alike, two artists on opposite sides of the world explore what it means to exist as an enigma, something that can never be defined, only expressed. softcagefilms.com
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Slade Warnken (she/they) – Co-Director
Slade aka Sw33t is a musician and documentary filmmaker with a focus on how we express identity, desire and transformation through performance. Based in New Orleans, Slade’s true passion is creating spaces that encourage multi disciplinary collaboration and House of Enigma was no different. Her goal was to create a film that brought together queer artists all over the world to try and describe the intangible feeling of finding a home in your body through performance and artistic expression.
Ying Dai 代莹 (They/she) – Co-Director
Ying is a Chinese photographer, filmmaker, and a multi-disciplinary scholar. They are currently based in Chicago, IL and Madison, WI. Their work focuses on issues of gender, queerness, immigration, fat liberation, anti-imperialism, and BIPOC resistance and joy. Their creative motivations stem from a deep commitment to their communities and a fierce love for their friends. @yingggdai
Do Digital Curanderas Use Eggs In Their Limpias?
Director: Roberto Fatal
Runtime: 13:58
A struggling Latinx healer considers abandoning the physical world for promises of a digital utopia.
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Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Tewa Pueblo, Ute, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi, films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal’s stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Film Institute Native Film Lab Fellow Alum and an Imagine Native Director’s Lab feature film fellow alum. Their debut feature script, ELECTRIC HOMIES, was selected by GLAAD x The Black List as one of the best unproduced screenplays of 2022. Their latest short sci-fi drama, Do Digital Curanderas Use Eggs In Their Limpias, made it’s world premiere at the British Film Institute’s Flare festival in 2023.
Last Call
Director: Drew de Pinto
Runtime: 3:48
In the throes of early pandemic lockdown, the threat of closure looms large over San Francisco’s historic queer bars. As the caretakers of these spaces look after their deserted venues, phantoms of the past and future begin to bleed into the present. Shot on black and white 16mm film and incorporating digital footage from before the pandemic, Last Call weaves together observational, essayistic, and experimental modes along with archival footage to gesture towards storied legacies of queer resilience. https://www.drewdepinto.com/lastcall
Drew de Pinto is a director and editor based in Queens. They are a recipient of the 2023 NewFest New Voices Filmmaker Grant, a graduate of the Documentary Film MFA at Stanford, and a member of the Alliance of Documentary Editors. Their work has been recognized by The New Yorker, Film Independent, and the International Documentary Association.
As a teenager, Drew was drawn to film as a way to process feelings of gender dysphoria. Their work explores how documentary and experimental modes of filmmaking can build alternative frameworks for gender and other social structures that allow us to imagine better worlds.
Presented as part of San Francisco Transgender Film Festival.
COVID Policy:
- Audience is required to be KN95 masked for the entirety of their time inside the building. Our staff will provide KN95 masks to everyone before they enter the building; audiences may also bring and wear their own KN95, N95 or N100 mask (unless someone’s disability, chronic illness or health condition means they cannot wear a mask).
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- You do not have any signs of contagious illness (COVID or otherwise), including pink eye, that aren’t fully explained by a non-contagious health condition that you have
- If you have had COVID, it’s been at least 10 days since your first symptoms or positive test if you were asymptomatic.
