Utah Queer Film Festival continues online October 28-November 3

October 15, 2022 at 8:00 pm

Framing Agnes

Agnes, the pioneering, pseudonymized, transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history.

In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt explores where and how her platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed — one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes’.

Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans healthcare.

Joynt’s signature form-rupturing style radically reenvisions the imposition of the frame on the cultural memory of transness through his brilliantly crafted, communally-driven excavation. This reclamation tears away with remarkable precision the myth of isolation as the mode of existence of transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

Directed by: Chase Joynt
Film type: Documentary
Runtime: 75 minutes
Year: 2022
Country: United States
Rating: Not Rated
Language: English

Awards

NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award–2022 Sundance Film Festival
Sky Documentaries Award –2022 MiX Milano
Best Canadian Film–2022 Queer North Film Festival Ontario
Audience Award for Best Feature–2022 XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin
Documentary Jury Award–2022 Wicked Queer Film Festival
Special Recognition Award for International Doc Feature: Social Impact–2022 Thin Line Film Festival

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Utah Queer Film Festival returns October 24-26, 2025!