Looking back on 2008 and looking forward to 2009

What caught my eye and touched my soul in 2008.

1. Bird Club – performance art celebrating the queer feminine. Live, warm and moving.
2. The Genome Chronicles – film by John Akomfrah – commissioned for Donald Rodney Retrospect curated by Keith Piper. Painful, wistful, haunting
3. Transgender Film Festival – inclusive, innovative, challenging
4. Savage Grace – film by Tom Kalin about the doomed heiress Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Antony – brave, exquisite costumes and cinematography, disturbing
5. MUST – Peggy Shaw and Clod Ensemble’s performance- raw, physical, sinuous, poetic
6. Survivors – TV series population survive deadly virus – uneven performances, integrated casting, 1 queer survivor, annoying, gripping
7. Club des Femmes – female cinema re-visited – political, feminist, counter culture
8. Femmes of Power – photographic essay on queer femininity eds. Del La Grace Volcano, Ulrika Dahl – visual, eclectic, much needed to shift the dominance of butch/andro imagery in queer culture

In 2009 I can’t wait for

1. Mississippi Damned – written and directed by Tina Mabry – three Black children try to escape their abusive situation
2. Push – directed by Lee Daniels based on the novel by Sapphire.
3. Weather Girl – film co-produced by Steak House comedy about an adult woman finding love