Movies by Justin Vivian Bond
Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger
For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender. And, her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, joins her on her latest tour capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist theorist activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style, and astonishing candor. By...
Apparition of the Eternal Church
The movie captures the responses of 31 authors, musicians, filmmakers and dancers to Olivier Messiaen's monumental organ work "Apparition of the Eternal Church." Listening to the 10-minute piece through headphones, the documentary subjects-most of whom are outsiders to the church and do not know what they're hearing-put Messiaen's project to the test: Is it possible to portray, through time-bound, invisible sound, the spiritual, the architectural, the eternal? The result is a collective interpretation improvising its way through an aesthetic...
Gifted and Challenged: The Making of 'Shortbus'
A look at the unusual process used in the making of the film Shortbus (2006) featuring interviews, behind the scenes footage and clips from the feature film. Director John Cameron Mitchell starts with the concept of using real sex in a film with a positive message. The cast of unknowns is selected from homemade audition tapes and then a callback audition workshop. More acting workshops are used to develop the characters and script. The project overcomes a number of obstacles and the rest of the film's development is followed up until its pre...
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution
A documentary on Queercore, the cultural and social movement that began as an offshoot of punk and was distinguished by its discontent with society's disapproval of the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender communities.
After Louie
As an AIDS activist and member of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s, Sam witnessed the deaths of too many friends and lovers. Battlewounded and struggling with survivor's guilt, Sam now resents the complacency of his former comrades and derides what he sees as the younger generation's indifference to the politics of sex, and of death. An unexpected intimacy with a much younger man challenges Sam's understanding of contemporary gay life. Through this unconventional romance, he is forced to deal with the trauma that so informs his past, their presen...
Orlando
Olga Neuwirth, for a long time one of the great composers of the present, succeeds with this opera in creating a captivating arc across many musical genres. It’s an exciting, socially critical production by Polly Graham who puts a fantastically singing and playing Kate Lindsey in the center of the action.
The Gospel of Eureka
Faith, love and civil rights collide on voting day in a small Southern town that hosts a famous performance of the last days of Christ and an infamous gospel drag show.