Masc: Trans Men, Butch Dykes, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema

January 19–February 25, 2024

Masc is a cinematic celebration giving recognition and dignity to the courageous queer, gender nonconforming visionaries who have blazed these trails and who continue to show the way forward and inspire us all.

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The Aggressives
Shinjuku Boys
Chavela
Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc's Adventure in Plastic
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Past Films

Shinjuku Boys
- Sunday, February 25 5 PM
Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams
United Kingdom, 1995
Shinjuku Boys, an amazing mid-1990s snapshot of AFAB gender identity in Japan, spotlights three onabe who pass as men and work as hosts at a Tokyo club.

Jenni Olson, TT Takemoto, and Amy Sueyoshi in Conversation
Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic
- Sunday, February 25 7 PM
Lisa Udelson
United States, 2001
Award-winning Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic follows Jewish butch lesbian folk singer Phranc navigating life as a Tupperware lady.

Lisa Udelson in Person
Masc—The Shorts
- Saturday, February 17 7 PM
This celebration of gender nonconforming heroes also showcases a powerful batch of cinematic rarities starring the butch dykes and transmasc pioneers of the early 1990s who blazed the trail for us today (plus a rare 1960s butch home movie treat!).

Bret Parker, Pete Barma, Stafford, Sophie Constantinou, Jude Dry, and Jenni Olson in Conversation
The Aggressives
- Saturday, February 17 4:30 PM
Daniel Peddle
United States, 2005
This vibrant documentary follows an array of butches, studs, and masc folks of color from the New York City ballroom and nightlife scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Jenni Olson and Fresh “Lev” White in Conversation
By Hook or by Crook
- Sunday, February 4 5 PM
Harry Dodge, Silas Howard
United States, 2001
Two unconventional grifters join forces and learn the true meaning of poise under pressure in this gorgeously antiauthoritarian tale of friendship, trust, and redemption cowritten and codirected by Harry Dodge and Silas Howard.

Introduced by Jenni Olson
Chavela
- Sunday, January 28 5 PM
Catherine Gund, Daresha Kyi
Mexico/United States, 2017
A tremendous, joyful portrait of legendary Mexican lesbian singer Chavela Vargas, told through amazing archival material and interviews with friends, colleagues, and ex-lovers.

Introduced by Jenni Olson and Marcia Ochoa
Southern Comfort
- Sunday, January 21 5 PM
Kate Davis
United States, 2001
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Southern Comfort—produced, filmed, and edited by Kate Davis—tells the powerful story of Robert Eads, a trans man dying of ovarian cancer who was failed by his doctors yet surrounded by his loving community.

Jenni Olson and Christoph Hanssmann in Conversation
No Ordinary Man
- Friday, January 19 7 PM
Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase Joynt
Canada, 2020
A new consideration of trans jazz musician Billy Tipton’s life story and the media’s response to it, crafted by trans masculine performers and trans historians.

Jenni Olson, Susan Stryker, and Isaac Fellman in Conversation

Masc: Trans Men, Butch Dykes, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema

January 19–February 25, 2024

Masc spotlights a rich tapestry of stories of the courageous lives of trans men, butch lesbians, gender outlaws, and gender nonconforming rebels. This program surveys six decades of cinema history in search of authentic, complex representations of masculine identity that exist outside the realm of cisheteronormative masculinity. Featuring tales of youth and adulthood, of obstacles and allies, this series presents multifaceted narratives of unforgettable subjects and characters. As with other under-represented groups, seeing ourselves on screen is a relatively rare experience for AFAB (assigned female at birth) transmasculine folks; this series encompasses a cinematically rich array of genres and styles, and these remarkable films offer a vital, necessary, transformative gift for all viewers. The series includes No Ordinary Man, an acclaimed rehabilitation of a real-life trans figure of the past, and the compassionate Sundance award-winning documentary Southern Comfort, which explores still painfully relevant issues of ignorance and exclusion. There are winning portraits of butch heroes in Chavela and Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic. Shinjuku Boys and The Aggressives spotlight AFAB masculine subcultures within their unique time and place, and an eclectic collection of shorts are showcased in Masc—The Shorts. While these films are grouped within the broader umbrella of masc, the nuances, intersections, and differences of what butch and trans can represent on-screen also serve as a continuous dialogue.

—Jenni Olson and Caden Mark Gardner, guest curators

Jenni Olson is a Berkeley-based queer film historian, writer, and filmmaker who is the proud proprietor of Butch.org, which features more information about all of her work as a longtime champion of LGBTQ+ cinema.

Caden Mark Gardner is a freelance trans film critic and researcher based in upstate New York. He focuses on queer cinema and the history of the trans film image.

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Copresented with the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and the Gender and Women’s Studies Department, UC Berkeley

This series was originally curated for The Criterion Channel.