Kino Lorber unveiled the official trailer for Framing Agnes, the award winning documentary on transgender histories. In the film, a cast of transgender actors including Angelica Ross, Zackary Drucker, Jen Richards, Max Wolf Valerio, Silas Howard and Stephen Ira reenact various case studies from Harold Garfinkel’s work with transgender clients at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Directed by Chase Joynt, Framing Agnes world premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Audience Award and the Innovator Prize in the NEXT program; and will open in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 2nd, 2022.
The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history.
In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes’s story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed.
Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers – including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) – take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.
Watch the official trailer for Framing Agnes.
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