Leather Graves

Starring: Carmen Scott, Frankie Symonds, Killah Croc, Lindsey Rae, Marten Katze, Math-You Land-Vote, Nathan Hill, Tomás de las Casas, & W.O.V

Director / Cinematographer / Editor: Malic Amalya

Original Score / Sound Design: Nathan Hill

Color Grading / Sound Mixing: Clovis Stocchetti

16MM WITH OPTICAL SOUND

12 minutes

2024

DESCRIPTION:

Queerness and death are interwoven in a frayed burial shroud. Through the rips of this tattered fabric, we witness queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people exiled from family units and shunned by their communities, while simultaneously confronting an oblivion of health disparities: AIDS, structural discrimination, state violence, physical assault, suicide, and murder. Though all non-heteronormative individuals face these terrors, trans women of color are the most vulnerable to harm.

Filmed in a graveyard and using in-camera double exposure techniques, the queers in Leather Graves defy the inherent asphyxiation of the burial shroud by devouring candy-coated blossoms in acts of self-preservation and defiance.