Pride Month Doc Corner: Keith Haring, Curve magazine and Intersex
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 8:00PM Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month where every week we focus on documentaries with queer themes. For the final edition (albeit on the 1st of July, sshhh), we are putting a brief spotlight on a few films that I have watched recently that should hopefully their way to audience’s over the coming months through queer film festivals (virtual or otherwise) and streaming.
by Glenn Dunks
Just by pure virtue of his being a central figure in New York City’s modern art scene of the 1980s, Keith Haring’s name comes up often in the films about the era. There are probably a dozen movies about him either as the central figure, or one of a whole scene that is easy to rhapsodize nostalgic about.
Perhaps after Ben Anthony’s Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which is screening as a part of Sheffield Doc/Fest and streaming soon, there won’t be a need for that...
Treating his meteoric rise to prominence and fame with the same simplicity (deceptively so) and vibrant electricity of his famed graffiti artwork, the film begins with his early life and build through his days using chalk in Manhattan subways and then to hanging out with Madonna and Grace Jones and his controversial art for the people pop-up shops.
The legacy of Haring’s conservative religious upbringing lingers—most prominently thanks to his now proud parents being on hand for rather darling testimonials (and fashion shows)—as does the eventual understanding that he would die of AIDS, spending the final years of his life churning out art to illuminate and educate. And yet, Anthony is wise to celebrate Haring rather than strictly eulogize him, taking viewers on a global art tour that steeps viewers deep into his world where he never wasted a moment. It was a world where a community brick wall or community center was a more accessible canvas than the museum walls that hang his work today, and a world that comes complete with a thrilling soundtrack and an all-too-contemporary relevance.
If Keith Haring and the queer art scene of the 1980s has been seen time and time again, then the same cannot be said for the subject matter of Tristan Aitchison’s Sidney & Friends. Intersex individuals are rarely given a spotlight, even in LGBTIQ+ cinema. Accurate or not, this Wikipedia page shows a discouraging dearth of works the navigate. And if queer cinema is so often about representation and identity, that’s a damning shame. I could genuinely only think of one off the top of my head, the science fiction drama Predestination that, just as an aside if you will oblige, fans of Succession would be wise to check out for Sarah Snook’s incredible performance.
Sidney & Friends is immediately quite arresting, using black and white photography with appropriately amplified grey tones to visually dive into the world of a small group of friends in Kenya who are intersex or who identify as transgender. The confusion that some audiences may find in what distinguishes one from another actually serves the narrative here, as Sidney and his friends navigate the difficult worlds of gender and sexuality removed almost entirely from the modern conveniences of medical and physical knowledge.They experience similar tribulations that many will find familiar such as attaining an ID and employment. They are labelled as cursed and abominations, but as Aitchison sweetly swerves through their lives in vignettes, their stories cry out for our attention. Intercut with compelling photography, this is a quiet but tender documentary that opens up the world of its subjects in a way that avoids both sensationalism and miserabilism while alive with the realities of living in their bodies.
Lastly, welcome levity and a smart fusion of history and biography is what guides Jen Rainin and co-director Rivkah Beth Medow’s Ahead of the Curve. Unknown to me, but no doubt at least a little bit familiar to many female viewers who identify as LGBT or Q, the story of Curve magazine is forged with that of its founder, Franco Stevens, and her fight to carve a place in society for lesbian-oriented content.
While it lacks the formal ingenuity of 2018’s incredible Ms. doc Yours in Sisterhood, I nevertheless enjoyed the way it tackled the changing landscape around representation and in particular the shifting face of queer media. Catherine Deneuve lawsuits, the hunt for the first celebrity cover, and the archive rummaging make for an entertaining documentary, but it is that youthful zest for queer rebellion (and an adult desire to recreate it) that carries Ahead of the Curve most of all.
Release: Keith Haring: Street Art Boy will air on BBC2 on July 4 and PBS in America some time soon hopefully. Sidney & Friends is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.in America. Ahead of the Curve had its World Premiere last week at 2020 Frameline44 Pride Showcase and will likely do more of the queer festival circuit.
Reader Comments (2)
Keith Haring! It was about to time. That period in NY is so interesting, creatively speaking.
Certainly familiar with Curve, but don't know a lot about Franco Stevens, so that sounds interesting.