Screening

Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Tewa Pueblo, Ute, and Spanish ancestors and Mexican-American culture. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi, apocalyptic films they make.

German film enfant terrible Rosa von Praunheim trained his lens on the trans and gender-defying Americans who sought refuge in Berlin’s 80s club scene, catching some of the most honest and alarmingly prescient intergenerational dialogues about trans life ever dedicated to celluloid in the process.

Dirty Looks has dug deep into documents of trans history to assemble a program of archival trans portrait films that spool from experimental cinema of the 1970s, activist video, and personal portraiture. Spanning an early decade of production, illuminating (lost?) queer histories and liminal spaces across America, The Girl Can’t Help It screens poignant testimonials and early rhetorics of trans-femme ideation.