Audiodescription
Criminal Queers
Directors: Chris E. Vargas, Eric A. Stanley
USA, 64 minutes, 2009, fiction
Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. Criminal Queers grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.
Trigger warning: police violence
Film screening dates: 23.11.2024 — 8.12.2024
Film screening dates: 23.11.2024 — 8.12.2024
Filmmakers
Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Bellingham, WA whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture. He earned his MFA in the department of Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011. From 2008-2013, he made, in collaboration with Greg Youmans, the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love…with Chris and Greg. Episodes of the series have screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including MIX NYC, SF Camerawork, and the Tate Modern.
With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2016) which have been screened at Palais de Tokyo, LACE, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and the New Museum among other venues. Vargas is also the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory&Art, an arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.
Eric A. Stanley works at the intersections of radical trans/queer aesthetics, theories of state violence, and anticolonial struggle. Along with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2016). A coeditor of the anthology Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011/2015), Eric’s other writing can be found in the journals Social Text, American Quarterly, Women and Performance, TSQ as well as in numerous collections.
With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2016) which have been screened at Palais de Tokyo, LACE, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and the New Museum among other venues. Vargas is also the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory&Art, an arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.
Eric A. Stanley works at the intersections of radical trans/queer aesthetics, theories of state violence, and anticolonial struggle. Along with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2016). A coeditor of the anthology Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011/2015), Eric’s other writing can be found in the journals Social Text, American Quarterly, Women and Performance, TSQ as well as in numerous collections.