Crossing Lines: Films by Raymond Rea at AgX
Co-presented by AgX Film Collective & Revolutions Per Minute Festival
If a mid-winter snowstorm prevented you from getting to the Brattle’s recent screening of Raymond Rea’s retrospective presented by RPM, please join us at the AgX Film Collective space for another opportunity to experience the program, which spans four decades of experimental moving image from AgX member Raymond Rea.
Raymond Rea is a filmmaker and writer. His film work has screened widely including Light Field, Engauge, Mimesis, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Film-Makers Cooperative, BFI, Seattle Transgender Underground, Lost & Found, Outfest, Inside Out, Mix Mexico, Mix NYC, San Francisco Transgender Festival, San Francisco International LGBT Festival (Frameline), Stockholm Transgender Festival, Cine Salon, ANALOGICA, Union Docs, Artists Television Access, Flex Fest, The Nightingale, Aurora Picture Show, New Fest, Out on Screen, Reeling, as well as other national and international spaces. His writing has been produced at EXIT Stage Left, EXIT Mainstage in San Francisco and at Theatre B in Minnesota. He is distributed through Canyon Cinema and Frameline Distribution https://raymondrea.com
Program runtime: 90 minutes + Q&A with Raymond Rea & Genevieve Carmel
Doors open at 6:30pm, program starts at 7:00pm.
Free with a suggested sliding scale $5 - $20 donation.
Co-presented by Revolutions Per Minute Festival (RPM Fest) – RPM is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, experimental film, essay film, animation, documentary, video and audiovisual performance, and is co-hosted by Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.
16mm prints from Canyon Cinema with support from RPM, courtesy of the filmmaker.
PROGRAM:
Walk Out | 1982 | 3 minutes | 16mm
A protopunk music video.
For Nelie and Maria | 1994 | 7 minutes | 16mm
For Nelie and Maria is a contact improvisation dance film with original choreography by Wes Staats and an original music score by George Todd. Three women start by playing paper/rocks/scissors and the game expands into an examination of the ability of siblings to use each other in movement and sound.
Third | 1996 | 9 minutes | 16mm
Third is an experimental narrative with a second life in its deeply layered soundtrack. Lit for night, and gelled for theatricality, Third looks at a trapped couple and their final release/demise.
Straightboy Lessons | 1999 | 9 minutes | 16mm
Straightboy Lessons is an experimental documentary that reenacts a conversation, and a friendship, between a transitioning Female to Male transman and a non-transsexual man. To-the-point imagery and the structure of a numbered lesson plan allowed the film to examine gender in an innovative new light.
Wanted | 1997 | 5 minutes | 16mm
Wanted is a look at the contrast between gay male and lesbian personal ads. Gender is reversed in the readers, leading towards a comic and confused mix of walks on the beach and sex in public. The film is shot in the straight-on style of a Warhol screen test.
Co-Directed with Krisi Gosney
HEAR | 1991 | 5 minutes | Digital
A triptych contrasting the noise of the street with the forced silence of institutionalization.
cat’s cradle | 2010 | 3 minutes | Digital
Cat's Cradle is an experimental animation and a collaboration between filmmaker Raymond Rea of Density Over Duration and sound artist Helena Thompson of Purest Spiritual Pigs. Combining analog 16mm xerox animation and traditional rotoscope with digital visual effects, this raw film/video plots the beauty of a failed attempt.
AUGMENTED | 2025 | 9 minutes | Digital
AUGMENTED was sparked through noticing that my massive spinal surgery was labeled medical augmentation, while my Transgender surgeries were named as alignment. I started to dig into the different ways that "going under the knife" is described, and by who, and why. Interviewing close friend and Transmale author Max Valerio was an obvious choice since he has his ear to the ground of what the current debates are about Trans existence on the internet. We are now under bombardment and an effort to erase us and at least part of that is due to our radical and futuristic interfacing with medicine. Shot completely on 16mm.
13th Ave, Fargo Mine Cart | 2022 | 3 minutes | Digital
13th Avenue Fargo Mine Cart was made driving down one big box store strip in the Midwest. Only conversation with a friend is redemptive.
Camera and Interview: Raymond Rea & Luke Safely
Edit: Raymond Rea
Sound Design: Purest Spiritual Pigs
Production format: Super 8
The Album | 2015 | 15 minutes | Digital
I was given a photo album that had been created by a late Great Uncle, Warren Sturgis, after his death in 1997. Turning the pages I found a document to his Pre-Stonewall New York City and Cherry Grove life. Incorporating a spread of ingredients, from the photos themselves to research in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, The Album tells a story about objects from the past, their legacy in the present, and all photography.
Put the Brights On | 2021 | 18 minutes | Digital
Put the Brights On combines 16mm, s8, archival footage, and interviews with four Trans people who choose to live outside the city. Shot and recorded in "Greater Minnesota" but applicable to the nationwide urban/rural divide.
Camera/Sound/Edit: Raymond Rea
Sound Design/Music: Purest Spiritual Pigs
Production format: 16mm, Super 8
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PLEASE NOTE:
Masks are encouraged at this event to help protect the most vulnerable among our community. If you are hoping to attend but feel that you need a specific accommodation of any sort, please do not hesitate to reach out to hi[at]agxfilm.org.