Saturday April 14 @ 8 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts presents Sarah Baker with NinaGerber & Mona Gnader. Composer, pianist, teacher and blues/rock/soul singer-songwriter extraordinaire Sarah Baker is back on our stage! with the legendary Nina Gerber on guitar, joined by electric bassist Mona Gnader of The Waboritas. Don’t miss this exciting collaboration of powerful women musicians at OCA’s acoustic sweet spot! $22 Advance/$26 at the door. Reservations advised. Fine Refreshments. Wheelchair Accessible. Art Gallery open during events. 707-874-9392. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental 95465.
Guess who just managed to pull a best-selling book out of their hat? That’s right: it’s John Oliver and the staff of Last Week Tonight—specifically, writer Jill Twiss—whose picture book, the somewhat cumbersomely titled Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, is, as of this writing, the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon. It’s a sweet victory, made even sweeter by the book that’s currently down at fourth place: Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a picture book written by Mike Pence’s 24-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and illustrated by his wife, Second Lady Karen Pence.
Proceeds from Oliver’s book go to the Trevor Project and AIDS United. The audio version is narrated by Jim Parsons, John Lithgow, RuPaul, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
Albany FilmFest is excited and honored to be able to showcase the work of Bay Area women filmmakers for the second consecutive year, particularly in this moment when women filmmakers in Hollywood are speaking loud and clear. Once again, we are so impressed by the range of issues (gentrification and displacement, women construction workers in Burma, LGBT relationships, Down syndrome, and even the afterlife), genres, and breadth of these films and filmmakers. We look forward to discussion and audience interaction after the screening.
THE FINAL SHOW
Directed by Dana Nachman
Narrative Short
A woman who has lived a long life full of love and loss has to decide, based on all that she has learned, who to take along to eternity.
About the filmmaker: Dana Nachman
Dana Nachman is an award-winning filmmaker of both fiction and documentary films. Nachman’s 2018 feature documentary Pick of the Litter was sold within 48 hours of its premiere at the Slamdance festival and will be released later this year by IFC’s Sundance Selects label.
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Directed by Pam Uzzell
Documentary Short
When artist Mildred Howard, daughter of legendary Berkeley activist Mable Howard, loses her South Berkeley home due to soaring rental prices, it costs Berkeley a piece of its history and its legacy. This story of an African American family illuminates both personal power to create possibilities in adversity, and the broader issue of gentrification and a housing crisis that threatens a community’s diversity.
About the filmmaker: Pam Uzzell
Pam Uzzell is a producer and editor specializing in documentaries and video content. Her documentary feature, Unearthing the Dream, featured on AETN, Arkansas’ public television network, won best documentary at the Arkansas Black Independent Film Festival, as well as an Indie Award of Merit. Video content clients are non-profits, local artists, community organizations, unions, art museums and more. Skills include Adobe Creative Suite, Avid, and FCPX.
SO MUCH YELLOW
Directed by Erica Milsom
Narrative Short
Inspired by true stories, the film explores the impressionistic nature of memories about institutionalization and loss in a family, particularly among siblings where one child has Down syndrome.
About the filmmaker: Erica Milsom
A filmmaker working on both independent and commercial projects originating in the San Francisco Bay Area, Erica brings boundless curiosity and a streamlined narrative sensibility to all her work.
THE CONSTRUCT:
FEMALE LABORERS AND THE FIGHT FOR EQUALITY
Directed by Jalena Keane-Lee
Documentary Short
An exploration of gender inequality and rapid change in Burma through the eyes of a human rights activist and a young female day laborer.
About the filmmaker Jalena Keane-Lee
Jalena Keane-Lee is a filmmaker and the Co-Founder of Blue Peel Productions, an all-female video production team. Originally from Berkeley, California, Keane-Lee passionate about empowering women and girls around the world through innovating and engaging documentary and narrative film.
ENCUENTRO
Directed by Florencia Manóvil
Narrative Short
When Claudia meets another Latino women in bar, the encounter leaves her with a new perspective.
About the filmmaker Florencia Manóvil
Florencia Manóvil is a feminist filmmaker passionate about independent film, social justice, environmentalism, and queer identities.
Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Florencia moved to the U.S. at the age of 18 to pursue film studies, eventually settling in the San Francisco Bay Area after living in Boston and New York for several years. A translator and subtitler, writer, filmmaker and mother, Florencia is committed to bringing underrepresented communities to the screen, as well as showcasing Oakland and the Bay Area at large.
In his new memoir, The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988, Martin Duberman meditates on an era that, perhaps more than any other, proved pivotal for queer life, political, cultural, and otherwise. “Although most gay people did share the prescribed values and aspirations of mainstream culture,” Duberman writes, “a radical minority… firmly rejected the liberal view that our national institutions were basically sound and that a little tinkering here and there around the edges would make them better still.” As homosexuals serve openly in the military and get married from coast to coast, as the divide between mainstream gay and radical queer becomes a wider gulf, as activists and academics and business fags continue to enrage each other, reading Duberman’s reflection on the period that made this all possible seems one of the most personally and politically important readings one could take on.
Duberman is perhaps best known as a historical biographer. In his lustrous lifetime in letters, he has published quintessential biographies on fireside poet James Russell Lowell (1966), politician Charles Francis Adams (1968), arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (2008), and social activist Howard Zinn (2012). The crowning jewel of his biographical work, however, is the 1989 biography of actor-turned-radical-Black-Marxist Paul Robeson. In a New York Times review of the Robeson biography, critic John Patrick Diggins writes of Duberman’s sage ability, “his astute knowledge of dramaturgy and music, his feeling for character and its complexities and, not least, his understanding that love may express itself, as it did in Robeson’s romantic adventures, in defiance of conventional monogamy, [which] makes Mr. Duberman the ideal biographer of a man who was both prince and pariah.” Much of The Rest of It is devoted to Duberman’s writing of the Robeson biography, which seemed to change his life, and by proxy, the future of queer studies as an intersectional endeavor itself.
Such an endeavor, Duberman illustrates, is not always a harmonious balance. Of taking on the monumental Robeson biography during the 1980s, he explains how “the demands of scholarship (and of my hermit instincts) have always compromised my counter impulse to engage more consistently in direct political activism.” In the words of RuPaul, can I get an amen (from all my fellow queer scholars / writers / progressives)? Such a split self is exhausting, and exhaustion is central to Duberman’s memoir. His historian identity shines throughout The Rest of It, an exhaustive encyclopedic documentation of his own life — its loves and losses, from his mother to his lovers and friends — and of the gay movement itself, both in the streets and in the academy between 1976 and 1988.
The love child of Eve Sedgwick and Oscar Wilde, Duberman does not dumb down the complex era or issues of which he writes; rather, he asks us, his readers, to rise to the occasion. Moving swiftly from the analytical to the confessional mode, The Rest of It is comfortable in its innate inbetweenness, its queerness of form and tone. And thankfully, at a time of such cultural and personal darkness, this is a book also full of queer optimism. “It isn’t all pain and lamentation,” Duberman writes in the book’s preface, ultimately concluding, “at the end of the eighties I’d very much learned to count my many blessings, though, as I wrote one day in my diary, ‘I loathe the ungrateful bastard in me who manages so continually to lose sight of them.’” What a lesson we lucky academics might benefit from learning: that even in a world of political turmoil, we have jobs that allow us time to read and write and ponder. To teach the next generations of readers, writers, and thinkers.
Here Duberman humbly explores a life central to queer studies and activism in the United States. In fact, he may be one of the most important queers readers know little about. He almost always writes about others: in the many biographies, yes, but also his award-winning plays (most notably “In White America,” a 1964 play revived many times over, documenting the quest of racial equality from the nation’s founding to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, a play all-too-relevant today); novels (such as the recent Jews Queers Germans, a breathtaking chronicle of Germany’s homosexual elites between the late 19th century and the start of World War II); and edited collections (particularly the 1989 landmark collection Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, an anthology collecting together writers who would become luminaries in the then nascent world of gay and lesbian studies, such as John D’Emilio, Esther Newton, and David Halperin). Just after the decade chronicled in The Rest of It, Duberman founded CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) in 1991, “the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities.” His contribution to the activism of gay revolution in the academy is paramount; in fact, we may not have queer studies at all without him, a history all-too-often and sadly erased.
But here, Duberman turns that historicist’s eye upon himself, and to much success, for both chronicling his own life and changing the way many of us think, research, and write. “Although I was reinhabiting my historian’s role, I was doing it in a new way,” he looks back, “helping to foster a field of inquiry — gender and sexuality studies — of more than academic interest… [providing] the gay and feminist movements with fresh data for challenging old assumptions and stereotypes.” We queers are better off, better informed and better empowered, for Duberman’s astute, engaged lifetime of work. We are also better off for reading The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988, for understanding the beautifully written history of one man, yes, but in effect, a part of the history of us all.
Clayton Delery’s previous book, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, was named Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2015. His new book is Out for Queer Blood: The Murder of Fernando Rios and the Failure of New Orleans Justice. It tells the story of an anti-gay hate crime that took place in New Orleans in 1958 and chronicles a time and place in American history where such a crime was inevitable. In addition, Delery is a contributor to collections such as My Gay New Orleans and Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men who Came Out Later in Life. Clayton Delery lives in New Orleans, where he is currently working on a book which does not involve autopsies or homicide.
Tell me briefly about how Mr. Fernando Rios was killed.
In September of 1958, three young men who were students at Tulane University didn’t have anything to do one night, so they decided to “roll a queer.” They were going to beat up and rob a gay man, simply because he was gay. Today this might be described as a gay bashing, and the crime might be described as a hate crime.
One of the students, a man named John Farrell, went inside a gay bar known as Café Lafitte. He started talking to Fernando Rios, who was a professional tour guide visiting the city. Farrell and Fernando Rios spoke for somewhere between a half hour and an hour. Then Farrell offered Rios a ride back to his hotel. When Farrell and Rios left the bar, Farrell’s two friends joined them from across the street. Farrell led Rios into an alley, where he was beaten so badly that he died of his injuries.
What sparked your interest in Mr. Rios? Was your interest in this case purely academic or historical? Was “rolling a queer” a popular hobby for the youths of the day?
I thought my interest was purely academic, but late in the process, I realized that I had always identified with Fernando Rios. In high school, I was bullied fairly regularly. Some of the bullying consisted of verbal taunts, but some of it was physical. Things like being pushed from behind, or having my face shoved into lockers. I was always afraid it would escalate.
Those kinds of events—rolling queers, or harassing the gay kid at school—may not happen as often as they used to, but they haven’t gone away.
Mr. Rios was only a visitor to New Orleans. Was his family, if any, present for the trial?
His family lived in Mexico City, and they couldn’t afford to come to New Orleans for the trial. The defendants packed the courtroom with their relatives. Especially their mothers, sisters, and aunts. It had the effect of creating sympathy for the defendants, and the fact that Rios had neither friends nor relatives in the room allowed the defense attorneys to create any picture of him that they chose.
After the assailants were arrested and tried, they were acquitted by a sympathetic jury, and when the verdict for acquittal was announced, the courtroom erupted into loud and sustained cheers. Were you surprised by this spirited applause?
I was not at all surprised. City Hall and both the daily newspapers were on the side of the defendants. The men who killed Rios were being portrayed as the real victims, and Rios was portrayed as a foreign pervert who had threatened them. The killing was self-defense—their attorneys said—because he had made an “indecent advance.” The fact that Rios was Mexican made it even easier to turn him into the villain, because it was a period of intense anti-Mexican prejudice. In fact, there are even newspaper articles in which Rios is not mentioned by name. Instead, he is identified as “the Mexican.”
Please describe the process of retrieving and examining courtroom documents from the case. Were they easily accessible? What document(s) provided you with the most details? Did you have access to everything you desired?
I had access to a good number of documents. The case report filed by the New Orleans Police, for example, detailed what happened when Rios was found in the alley. Their report contained the statements made by the three defendants upon their arrest. The pre-trial documents filed by both the prosecution and defense teams were available, and so was Fernando Rios’s autopsy report.
Unfortunately, the transcripts from the actual trial were lost when the city flooded after Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, both of the New Orleans daily papers covered the trial in detail, so it was fairly easy to reconstruct what happened in the courtroom.
Were you able to locate any of Mr. Rios’s family? If so, what was their response?
He would be eighty-six today if he hadn’t died. It’s possible there are surviving siblings, or maybe some nieces and nephews, but I was never able to locate any. I would love it, though, if one day I were to get an email or a letter from somebody who had known him.
Out For Queer Blood delves into the connections between anti-Latino prejudices, homophobia, and societal norms in 1950s America regarding “operation wetback.” How does that parallel with today’s society and the Trump Administration’s stance on immigration? While writing your book and watching the evening news or reading newspapers, how did it make you feel?
I spent several months reading newspapers from the 1950s, and then I would come home and watch the news and realize that many of the stories were the same. In the 1950s, newspapers described Mexican immigrants as sources of poverty, crime, and disease. I would read that, and then come home and see Donald Trump on television describing them as murderers, rapists, and drug dealers.
But the parallels went beyond the issue of immigration. In the 1950s, newspapers warned people that gay men were a threat, because they would molest young children in public restrooms. While I was writing this book, many politicians on the political right were claiming that transgender people were a threat, because they would molest children in public restrooms. In the 1950s, conservative politicians were trying to disenfranchise black voters through literacy tests. Today, conservative politicians are trying to pass voter I.D. requirements. They claim this is to prevent voter fraud, but on-site voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. The voter I.D. laws would, however, make it difficult for poorer people to vote, and those poorer people are disproportionately people of color.
Was there any difficulty writing this book compared to writing The Up Stairs Lounge?
The difficulty was emotional. As horrible as the story of The Up Stairs Lounge was, there were at least a few people courageous enough to speak out publicly on behalf of the dead and injured. When Fernando Rios was murdered, there was nobody to speak out for him. That left the press and the defense team free to describe him as a pervert and a potential rapist, and to claim that the three men who killed him had done absolutely nothing wrong. Indeed, it was implied that they had done a public service. And I found dealing with that part of the story very painful.
Your book launch was this past November and was hosted at Cafe Lafitte which is the bar where Mr. Rios met his attackers. Describe the night of your book launch.
It was a great night. The current management knew about the Fernando Rios murder, and that he had been in the bar right before he died. They were delighted to host the event. In the 1950s, the mayor was engaged in an official effort known as “the drive against the deviates.” He wanted to eliminate homosexuality from the city of New Orleans. Instead, New Orleans is now internationally recognized as one of the nation’s capitals of LGBT life. Rios was a victim of the drive against the deviates, but clearly the city’s LGBT community is winning the war.
In 2016, we were cohorts through the Lambda Literary writing workshop and studied nonfiction with Sarah Schulman. You workshopped Out For Queer Blood. What impact did that have on your book? How did you find your publisher?
Sarah Schulman is a remarkable woman and a very gifted teacher, so just being in a room with her, and with other talented writers, was a real blessing. She also was gracious enough to read my manuscript and comment upon it while I was getting it ready to send to the publisher. You and the other students in the workshop helped me realize what parts of the story—and New Orleans history—were common knowledge, and where I had to fill in background information.
As for how I found my publisher—well, my publisher found me. For years, I was writing one version or another of the Great American Gay Novel, and nobody was ever particularly interested. Then I started writing a nonfiction account of the fire at the Up Stairs Lounge, and an editor at McFarland heard about what I was doing and sought me out. Later, when I was nearing completion of a nonfiction account of the Fernando Rios killing, McFarland came looking again. So my advice to young writers who have a difficult time getting published might be to put the novel on hold for now, and consider writing nonfiction. There are lots of true stories out there that need to be told.
Sunday April 29 @ 4 pm.T Sisters! at Occidental Center for the Arts.Oakland-based siblings Erika, Rachel and Chloe are fast-rising singer/songwriter stars on the folk/Americana festival circuits who collaborate with and support acts such as Amos Lee, Laurie Lewis,Todd Rundren, the Woods Brothers, and more. Captivating audiences with soaring harmonies, inventive arrangements, and plenty of sisterly sass, they evoke the classic girl groups from the Andrews and Pointer Sisters to modern family bands like First Aid Kit. Enjoy their lively originals and covers of folk, Americana, gospel, R & B, soul and bluegrass at OCA’s acoustic sweet spot. Reservations advised! $19 Adv/$24 at door. Fine refreshments. Art Gallery open. Wheelchair accessible. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental 95465 . 707-874-9392www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org.
Calendar/ Blues/Rock/Soul Music: Saturday April 14 @ 8 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts presents Sarah Baker with NinaGerber & Mona Gnader. Composer, pianist, teacher and blues/rock/soul singer-songwriter extraordinaire Sarah Baker is back on our stage! with the legendary Nina Gerber on guitar, joined by electric bassist Mona Gnader of The Waboritas. Don’t miss this exciting collaboration of powerful women musicians at OCA’s acoustic sweet spot! $22 Advance/$26 at the door. Reservations advised. Fine Refreshments. Wheelchair Accessible. Art Gallery open during events. 707-874-9392. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental 95465.
There are dozens of new books to choose from each month if you’re a fan of f/f or m/m romance, never mind the m/f romance that’s been booming for decades. But what if you want to read a “happily ever after” or “happy for now” story that includes a trans person? Or someone who is asexual and/or aromantic? Those are much harder to find, especially if you want stories that don’t fling themselves (sometimes willfully, it seems) into the pitfalls of stereotypes and damaging, or even triggering, representation.
Queerly Loving (Volume 1) is a short story collection that gives happy endings to a range of LGBTQA+ characters, by authors who themselves are from across the LGBTQA+ spectrum. The nine stories are so varied in style and content that there is sure to be something for everyone. Want to read a fluffy contemporary YA story with a Jewish trans boy and his crush? It’s in there and it’s called “Miss Me With That Gay Shit (Please Don’t)” by Sacha Lamb. How about a science fiction story with lesbians, nonbinary people and a trans woman, that features a poly triad rescuing their friend’s girlfriend? It’s in there too, and it’s called “A Gallant Rescue” by A.P. Raymond! Best of all, because the stories celebrate queer love in many of its possible forms, nobody dies or gets their heart broken, and it’s glorious.
Unless you’re particularly interested in the theme of an anthology, it can be hard to know whether you’re likely to enjoy one or not. It’s not unusual to pick up a collection only to find one or two excellent stories, a few very good ones, one terrible story, and the rest falling somewhere in between. Not so with Queerly Loving, where all of the stories are engaging and interesting, and many of them warm and lovely.
The writing style and genres vary from story to story. In addition to the contemporary YA and science fiction stories I just mentioned, readers are treated to fantasy worlds with magic and dragons, teen girls in the 80s who bond over typing tournaments, a short one-act play about young girls in 1879, and a grad student and a park ranger finding lust and possibly more in the mountains of contemporary Colorado. No two stories are alike, even when they share the same genre—except, of course, that they all deliver a happy sigh by the end—because they each explore queerness in different ways.
Particular standouts include “First Light at Dawn” by Nyri Bakkalian, told in email form from one trans veteran to another, sharing how her life has changed since they were in the service together; “Dragons Do Not” by Evelyn Deshane, about a woman who learns that not everything she’s been told about her companion dragon is as true as she was led to believe; and “Birthday Landscapes” by E H Timms, about an aromantic warrior with magical powers and his family as he comes home to celebrate his twins’ birthday.
Because the stories aren’t connected by anything except that they all provide a happy ending, no matter the characters’ sexual orientation or gender presentation, the shift from genre to genre can sometimes be jarring. Readers are moved between contemporary, historical, and futuristic settings, with a third of the stories being fantasy. Starting a new story requires finding your feet each time in a way that’s different than it might be when reading an anthology with a tighter theme, but each story is so lovely that discovering them is a delight. The heat level in the stories also varies, with many of them having no sex and a couple with explicit sex on the page, always in a way that’s fitting for the each story being told.
The blurb for Queerly Loving says “Get ready for your queer adventure,” which is an apt catchphrase. Each story is sure to make your heart happy and full of hope that everyone can have a happily ever after. You won’t be able to read these stories without a smile and many of them will stick with you long after you’ve finished reading them.
Queerly Loving (Volume 1)
Edited by G Benson and Astrid Ohletz
Queer Pack
Paperback, 9783955339517, 190 pp.
November 2017
Colfax police Captain Alex Ryan arrives home to find a thug barring her door and an unwelcome visitor inside their apartment with her wife, CJ St. Clair. The uninvited guest turns out to be CJ’s snobby, fractious mother, Lydia. She estranged CJ years before when CJ came out to her. Now, she’s shown up demanding her daughter come to the aid of the family using her skills as a police investigator to find the killer of her brother’s ex-wife. Otherwise, her brother, Clayton, may end up going to jail for the murder.
After some mental gymnastics, CJ finally decides to travel to her Savannah childhood haunts to prove who killed Amy St. Clair, leaving Alex in Colorado. While she’s away, Alex finds herself confronted with a mystery of her own and a decision she knows she can’t make without CJ.
While CJ slogs through her informal investigation, trying to clear her brother, she finds herself no closer to discovering who the killer is than we are, yet she’s determined to get to the bottom of it all. She also tries to get to know her niece—not an easy task with a teen who’s recently been through the trauma of her mother’s death.
Taken In is a story with an abundance of red herrings, all swimming upstream, while CJ stands with a dangerous current pounding at her back. She needs to snag the right fish, but if her timing is off, she could find herself in serious trouble. That little fish she’s after could turn out to be a shark.
At home, Alex is followed by a wraith and she has no idea who the woman is or why she’s doing it. It’s a simple matter to discover the identity of the woman, and what’s driving her quickly comes to light. However, once it does, Alex is confronted with old memories, old pain, and a moral dilemma.
More than a mystery, this story is also about relationships and choices. When Alex is forced to reveal what she knows about the stranger who’s been following her to family, she and her sister must choose how to go forward with their lives. Alex must determine if the promotion she’s encouraged to pursue is something she wants and, given the circumstances, that decision will have to be postponed until she can discuss it with her wife. Once CJ gets to the bottom of her investigation, she must resolve how she will deal with her mother and her long held rejection of her. Finally, CJ must decide what to do about her rebellious teenage niece, should her brother end up in prison.
CJ and Alex’s devotion to one another makes them easy to like. As they traverse the story trying to solve their own mysteries, information revealed through narration and their own inner dialogue help us determine who they are. The different pieces of the story are well integrated, interesting, and they move the tale along quickly to conclusion.
Characters like Lydia St. Clair push CJ to get to the bottom of the story, all the while acting as a thorn in her side, forcing CJ to confront long buried emotions concerning the woman. Her brother, Clayton, is both a player and a buffoon, contributing to his own problems and possibly his own downfall, begging the question: Is he the killer? Or is it someone else in the long string of suspects?
Abbott has skillfully portrayed the characters in this tale. A bit of a “cozy” with a little “thriller” thrown in for good measure, the story makes us feel as if we’re walking alongside CJ and Alex, discovering answers and experiencing how each revelation affects them. This story is an easy read—delightfully entertaining, jam-packed with baffling suspects and a surprising twist, all leading us to its satisfying end. A great read for the couch or the beach.
A drama about a transgender woman has won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Chilean film A Fantastic Woman has taken home the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, its only nomination.
A Fantastic Woman’s director Sebastián Lelio, thanked star Daniela Vega when accepting the award.
He said: “I want to thank the cast of the film, especially the brilliant actor Francisco Reyes Morandé and the inspiration for this movie, Daniela Vega.
“This film was made by a lot of friends and artists. I share this with all of you tonight.”
28-year-old Vega has been receiving rave reviews for her central role in the film.
Vega’s character Marina has to deal with her partner’s death and his family’s subsequent transphobia, while simultaneously trying to find her identity without her beloved Orlando.
Screening in several film festivals internationally, A Fantastic Woman had been very well received, particularly for Vega’s performance.
The magazine said she deserved “so much more than political praise,” and was one of many publications heaping compliments on the actress.
The film has been praised both for Vega’s performance and the artistic merit of the film, but for also ensuring that a transgender character was played by a transgender actress.
After his win, director Lelio said that it was critically important that the main character in the film be played by a transgender actress.
He said: “I felt that, for me, it was [a] very instinctive and strong decision knowing that I was not going to make this film without a transgender actress in main role.
“That put [the] film in a different dimension because of everything that Daniela brought to the film.”
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After it was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, Variety called Vega’s performance “a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting.”
However, Vega herself missed out on a nomination for Best Actress.
As Vega took the stage at the 90th Academy Awards, she said: “Thank you for this moment. I want to invite you to open your hearts and your feelings to feel the reality, to feel love. Can you feel it?”