Criminal Queers tour

We are currently booking the Criminal Queers tour for winter/ spring 2010. Contact us at criminalqueersfilm@gmail.com for more information.

“A new genre of queer cinema..” Dazed and Confused

“Homotopia challenges the gay-marriage movement’s obsession with assimilation at all costs, yet it does so with hilarity and messiness that reveal surprising intersections among gender defiance, failure, and resistance.” make/shift

Chris and Eric at Smith College

Following the aesthetically provocative “Queer/Violence” tour featuring Homotopia which crisscrossed the world from NYU, Stanford University and Bates College to screenings in Barcelona, Glasgow and Copenhagen, Chris Vargas and Eric Stanley return with their new traveling performance–film–lecture program, “Criminal Queers”. Criminal Queers brings together powerful abolitionist voices like Angela Y. Davis (who plays herself in the film), with a fictional, campy world of queer insurrection. Reworking what a queer history might mean for the possibility of surviving the present, the program centers the devastating effects the prison industrial complex (PIC) has had on transgender/ gender non-conforming and queer communities. With over 65% of trans women surveyed having been directly impacted by some form of the PIC these conversations around how our communities, lives, and worlds are torn to pieces by intuitional forms of violence under the guise of “safety” are urgently necessary. Hidden in the shadows of mainstream LGBT movements, our program critiques the mass imprisonment of queer folks, specifically poor and queer folks of color, and envisions, through radical form and altered visions, a world without walls.

The program opens with a lecture by Chris Vargas and Eric Stanley, which gives historical and contemporary analysis and examples of the ways in which queer communities are impacted by forms of state violence. Interwoven into the lecture is a conversation around the work of aesthetics and form in the wake of epistemic violence. These opening remarks serve to frame the experience of watching the film program and help push viewers past easy consumption to a place of transformation and change. We then show our feature film, Criminal Queers (synopsis below). The program ends with question and answer with the artists and runs approximately two hours.
Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. Criminal Queers grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.





Criminal Queers tour We are currently booking the Criminal Queers tour for winter/ spring 2010. Contact us at criminalqueersfilm@gmail.com for more information. “A new genre of queer cinema..” Dazed and Confused “Homotopia challenges the gay-marriage movement’s obsession with assimilation at all costs, yet it does so with hilarity and messiness that reveal surprising intersections among gender defiance, failure, and resistance.” make/shift Chris and Eric at Smith College Following the aesthetically provocative “Queer/Violence” tour featuring Homotopia which crisscrossed the world from NYU, Stanford University and Bates College to screenings in Barcelona, Glasgow and Copenhagen, Chris Vargas and Eric Stanley return with their new traveling performance–film–lecture program, “Criminal Queers”. Criminal Queers brings together powerful abolitionist voices like Angela Y. Davis (who plays herself in the film), with a fictional, campy world of queer insurrection. Reworking what a queer history might mean for the possibility of surviving the present, the program centers the devastating effects the prison industrial complex (PIC) has had on transgender/ gender non-conforming and queer communities. With over 65% of trans women surveyed having been directly impacted by some form of the PIC these conversations around how our communities, lives, and worlds are torn to pieces by intuitional forms of violence under the guise of “safety” are urgently necessary. Hidden in the shadows of mainstream LGBT movements, our program critiques the mass imprisonment of queer folks, specifically poor and queer folks of color, and envisions, through radical form and altered visions, a world without walls. The program opens with a lecture by Chris Vargas and Eric Stanley, which gives historical and contemporary analysis and examples of the ways in which queer communities are impacted by forms of state violence. Interwoven into the lecture is a conversation around the work of aesthetics and form in the wake of epistemic violence. These opening remarks serve to frame the experience of watching the film program and help push viewers past easy consumption to a place of transformation and change. We then show our feature film, Criminal Queers (synopsis below). The program ends with question and answer with the artists and runs approximately two hours. Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. Criminal Queers grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.