by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor
As some of y’all might have noticed, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor is a fairly new name to be showing up on TFE and acting so familiar. So, happy Pride to me! The diva formerly known as Nick is now going by Joanna, and she's has the hormones to back it up. June may be over, but with my other major cinematic obligation with the Columbus Film Festival currently completed, I figured I should polish off my writings on two exemplary documentary shorts that deserve an audience all year round. Better late than never, right? Right! Also, please sound off your favorite queer-as-fuck films you watched in June, whether they're first tiime watches or perennial faves. We gotta share the love around here, goddammit!
Greetings from Washington D.C. (1981, dir. Lucy Winer)
A time capsule defined by warm, exuberant potential, its hard-won optimism compromised in numerous directions by the passage of time. On the one hand, the October 14th, 1979 rally advocating for the enshrining of gay rights into U.S. law constituted a major political achievement for gay and civil rights activists. It was the first rally of its kind specifically coordinated by LGBTQ activists, with over 100,000 people estimated to have been in attendance. None of the planning or organizing is part of Greetings from Washington D.C., though the political goals represented are on everybody’s lips. Winer films the rally from the perspective of a marcher, another set of eyes ecstatically soaking in this moment and the people around her. We don't get a one-on-one with Audre Lorde, but we receive her speech with the crowd and feel the power of it coursing through our systems. It’s ann unbeatable survey of how queer culture dressed, styled, spoke, and celebrated at this particular moment in history. Shot on a sunny fall day, Winer’s footage is gorgeous, capturing this crowd's radiant energy, and her rhythms with structure and editing offer a rambunctious balance of capturing the march generally as well as her own unique experiences.
On the other hand, Greetings From Washington D.C. exists at literally the last moment one could make a politically-minded documentary about the LGBT community without the AIDS crisis being anywhere on its radar. Hell, Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency a few months after this rally, and the film was released in theaters only a year into his tenure. Did audiences feel this was celebrating a moment already gone, just like we receive psychic damage whenever we look back at any artwork or commentary on our recent political moment? It’s genuinely inspiring to see the resilience and ambition on display here, but I can’t help some dismay at seeing activists in 1979 still looking to the horizon for legislative and social equalities we still haven’t reached.
Meeting these hands in the middle for a clap-clap-clap, there’s something to be said for the positive space reading of the last sentence. It’s so galvanizing to be reminded that queer people have always existed, in this country, on this planet, throughout time and space, fighting for our right to exist in coalition with so many other minority groups. A shot of two lesbians talking shit at a bored cop is almost funny, because for all my talk of whether or not Greetings is stuck in its specific moment, you can see the same image and the same argument playing out every day.
The folks Winer interviews are just as fulfilling as her portrait of the rally’s collective energy. I watched this weeks ago, and I’m still thinking about the out-and-proud lesbian in her 70s, a former teacher who discovered her sexuality only two years prior and has been making up for lost time like nobody’s business. She wields a homemade sign and a big grin while marching with her fellow dykes. We also get a fascinating conversation between Winer and a disapproving Christian bystander, a woman whose openness to new information about the homosexual lifestyle is so far removed from modern stereotypes of Bible-thumpers crashing your Pride party. In some ways Greetings from Washington D.C. dates itself, yet its optimism towards queer futures, and the beauty it captures in every human experience we see, is always essential. We can be troubled by the fact our present doesn’t resemble the future these people imagined, but it feels so much better to follow their example of collective action and joy than to shrink from it.
Greetings from Washington D.C. is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Shinjuku Boys (1995, dirs. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams)
A novel, casually electrifying look at a subculture I never knew existed. Shinjuku Boys takes its name from the Shinjuku Ni-chōme neighborhood, an area known for its many queer nightlife areas. The film follows Gaish, Tatsu, and Kazuki, a trio of employees at Tokyo’s New Marilyn Club. The club caters to an exclusively female clientele, designed to create a safe environment for women to be lavished with all forms of masculine-coded attention without fear of male violence. New Marilyn appears to be staffed exclusively by women costumed as handsome, well-dressed men who charm and arouse their patrons. Yet for some employees, this is the chance to present a more glamorous version of themselves. Our protagonists are onnabe, or transmasculine men, each with their own relationships to gender presentation, hormone therapy, and sexual identity. None of them identify as transmen verbatim, though the difference in language pales compared to the eternal lingua franca of queer solidarity and self-expression.
Shinjuku Boys’ nonchalant and intimate presentation of its protagonist’s lives reminded me a great deal of Antonio Gimenez-Rico’s 1983, Madrid-set documentary Dressed in Blue. If you haven’t seen it yet, go check out its tale of six trans female sex workers and entertainers going about their lives in post-Franco Spain. Shinjuku Boys displays a similar ease with the dynamic between its directors and their protagonists, as well as the color and texture of the areas they frequent. Longinotto and Williams film these men with a verité intimacy befitting their unpretentious attitudes. Whether they’re working at the club, going to the salon, lounging by themselves at home, or spending time with significant others, Gaish, Tatsu, and Kazuki remain open and comfortable to the directors’ camera. The zooms and cuts within interviews convey real camaraderie between the men and their interviewers. We never feel like we’re invading their space, and in the context of the deeply personal interactions and self-disclosures these men and their loved ones articulate, that’s a tremendous feat.
I’m not going to catalogue every single moment of Shinjuku Boys I was deeply moved by, because it’s basically all of them, but I’ll highlight the scene that’s stuck most with me. There’s a sequence halfway through the film where Tatsu is being interviewed at home with his girlfriend Tomoe, the two sitting together on the couch, and Longinotto asks whether he would’ve preferred being a cis boy. Tatsu speaks candidly about wondering what might have been different for him, yet he’s ultimately too proud of the body he’s made and happy with his life to crave another version of his body. From one trans baddie to another, this is such a potent, recognizable mixture of pride and curiosity. Seeing the fruits of your labor blossom is so beautiful.
I’m similarly awed by a visit to a drag queen bar, a phone call between Kazuki and his mother that goes so much better than he was prepared for, the juxtaposition of Gaish’s isolation from his family. The return trips to the New Marilyn help situate the boys in Tokyo's larger queer cultures. You simply can't undervalue footage of elegantly dressed femmes and handsome butches commisserating in a smoky, chic bar bathed in gold light. Watching a potential employee balk at some of the dress code requirements during a job interview is an illuminating contrast to how suavely yet how distinctly our protagonists embrace their masculinity. Each man’s testimonies recounting what led to their eggs cracking are special, recognizable in broad strokes but so specifiic to the individuals we'll come to know for this hour, and their combined experiences add up to one of the best films I’ve watched all year.
Shinjuku Boys can currently be found here in its entirety on YouTube. It is also streaming on Kanopy, and is available to buy or rent on most major streaming platforms.