Presented by the Film and Digital Media Department.
Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Communications Building, Room 150 (Studio C)
Watch the trailer at https://www.desirelinesfilm.com/
DESCRIPTION: Desire Lines is a hybrid documentary blending candid interviews, archival materials, and narrative fiction as a framework for exploring the complicated and often unwritten history of transmasculine sexuality.
The fictional story centers on Ahmad, an Iranian expat who arrived in the US at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Now in his 60s, concealing his trans identity for decades has meant distancing himself from intimacy. Ahmad comes to the LGBTQ archives to explore his latent homosexuality and engage in fantasy to reimagine his life as an out, gay trans man. He is assisted by Kieran, a twenty-something nonbinary archivist who is immersed in queer culture and trans community. Though they come from radically different cultures, their bond is strengthened by a shared fascination with Lou Sullivan, a gay transgender AIDS activist.
The film pivots between fantasy, fiction, and fact using the letters and interviews of Lou Sullivan as the historical core. Interspersed throughout are interviews with a diverse group of transmen across the US, candidly discussing the evolution of their desires and illuminating their struggles with gender (non)conformity, fetishization, transphobia, safer sex, and sexual racism.
BIO: Jules Rosskam is an internationally award-winning filmmaker, educator and 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. His most recent feature documentary, Paternal Rites (2018), premiered at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and went on to win several festival awards. His work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Anthology Film Archives, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art, the Museum of Moving Images, and hundreds of film festivals worldwide. He has participated in residencies at Yaddo, ISSUE Project Room, Marble House, PLAYA and ACRE.