ready to wwww

more fall ready to wear

(vivienne westwood, viktor & rolf)

one of the reasons i started CLASS was to try to be transparent around my experiences doing wildness... and since wildness has more or less turned into a movie, i feel equally compelled to make THIS process transparent. i haven't been able to do that as much recently cause i've been caught up in the DOING of everything - mostly editing & fundraising on crazy deadlines - that i haven't had much time to reflect. but now that we've reached our 12K kickstarter goal (less than 48 hours to go!!!!), i feel the gravity of this moment as both momentum and weight. periodically i try to FULLY take time out in order to check myself about what's at stake (and spent the last 2 weeks in san francisco retreating THINKING and taking care) so ready to do that now.

the main question for me continues to be what does this MOVIE form do to creative process... in other words how does story-telling for sit-down audiences in dark theaters require serious skill at conventions (or manipulating them). 

on one hand i feel deeply responsible to several social issues- mainly the intense struggles of trans/gender-variant people worldwide, and the strategic importance of centering our movement on the most vulnerable members of our community- in our case, undocumented trans folks and therefore in LA, the latin american context. mobilizing people's HUMANITY (documentary ta da!) can actually be a badass means to an end- like to represent more radical possibilites for the LGBT movement, and if a movie can do that, I SAY YES !

on the other hand, i'm totally restistant to that whole illusion of objectivity thing, and the sacrifice of complexity that documentary requires. to become truly skilled at it, it kind of changes your brain- makes you look at things like: how can i make everyone and everything look/sound a certain way, so i can say what i want?

the reason why this negotiation matters so much is that it shapes the movie, and the form ultimately determines who and how many people might want to watch it... and given that my subject is both fragile and important (to me & community) - it continues to be a fine line between raising conciousness versus exposure.

so i find myself somewhere in the middle,

possibly had a major breakthrough tonight working with my editors suzanne mejean and kaliisa conlon (!!!) which made me stop trippin about which way documentary. basically we discovered how to represent something super basic, essential, and epically complex about wildness, through a performance by ariel prodigy (left). it was one of those moments where i could really appreciate what a blessing it is to be able to WORK on something for so long that you are no longer actually LIVING with it. just when you think you can't eak any more meaning out of it, you realize you can finally SEE it, instead of yourself... or something? yea it's late... so excited to see how this spins everything around!!!! see u on the other side ;)