Framing Agnes

Inspired by the discovery of archives in the UCLA gender clinic, Framing Agnes (2022, directed by Chase Joynt) recreates interviews of transgender patients who had to navigate the intrusive and degrading medical establishment to receive gender-affirming care. Experimental and earnest in equal measure, the film reflects on the rhetorical choices trans people face when they are forced to narrate their identity to a cisgender audience. 

Breaking the frame of its historical recreation, the documentary’s actors reflect on their own experiences with disclosing a trans identity. Featuring contemporary trans actors Angelica Ross, Zachary Drucker, and Silas Howard, and trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson, the film probes the tensions between visibility and violence, prurience and power, fact and fiction.

As it moves between past and present, Framing Agnes confronts the scales of historical memory—namely how much we can truly know about people who had to hide parts of their stories to survive. And it challenges us to question what counts as “community” for trans, queer, and other people that do not conform to the demands of a cisheteronormative world. 

Teagan Bradway, Associate Professor of English at SUNY Cortland and Society for the Humanities Fellow, will introduce the film, which is presented in conjunction with the Society for the Humanities focal theme: Scale.

Free admission! Sponsored by the Society for the Humanities.

Part of our "Scale on Screen" series. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.