What is Transformation? – Pioneers Go East Collective’s Out-FRONT! Film Festival Finds Answers in Obscurity

Dominique Castelano, "Personal Mythologies"
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By Liana Wilson-Graff

Part of a packed and exciting year for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals NYC series, Pioneers Go East Collective, a New York-based grassroots and artist-driven organization, presents a festival of its own. The third annual Out-FRONT! Festival presents the work of movement artists inspired by LGBTQ+ and feminist points of view. A standout pocket of their packed program was their Out-FRONT! Radical Queer Dance & Film Series, presenting short experimental and movement-based films from six different artists. They each give their own distinct and valuable contributions to this rich subject matter, showcasing a variety of approaches to movement and screen dance practice. 

Jueun Kang, “All Things Present“, Photo: John Kim

Much of the six artists focused on subverting traditional narratives of queer and trans folks. In a climate where sharing authentic queer and feminist stories is vital to survival, strengthening community, and building resistance, each one of these films gives a refreshing take on queerness and the spectrum of femme existence that is never on the nose, but often piercing in impact. With movement as the framework for each of the films, of course, the body becomes a focal point. The ways in which these artists fragmented, blended, layered, squeezed, pulled, hid, and revealed the moving bodies in their films were fascinating. 

Maamoun Tobbo, “Via Ascensionis“, Photo: Joe Arcidiacono

Dominique Castelano begins the series with her emotional film, Personal Mythologies, about her journey away from home to find something deeper and more authentic within and outside of herself. With absolutely pristine visuals that become movement themselves, blending and cutting in a montage to reveal Castelano’s world, her film sets a tone that is completely flipped on its head by the following abstract work from Haley Morgan Miller, all the time it takes. Miller literally codes the world of her film, transforming her body and environment into completely unrecognizable computed illustrations and technically constructed beings, ranging from mere outlines to bulbous, pulsing creatures out of a sci-fi film you’ve never seen before. Jueun Kang’s film, All Things Present, works with memory as a vast visual experience that can transform the body, fragmenting Kang’s figure into a living pair of hands that hold more emotion than any landscape can. Maamoun Tobbo’s, Via Ascensionis, uses spoken word, improvised movement, beautifully captured visuals, and singing to signify his second birth into the freedom of obscurity — free from labels, and embracing wholeness as an ever-changing experience of self. 

Haley Morgan Miller, “all the time it takes“, Photo: Haley Morgan Miller

An absolute standout film in the series, bree breeden’s, shells, is a remarkable piece of art. Filmed by MK Ford, and edited and performed by breeden themself, their body becomes a fleshy, living sculpture as it is doubled by a split screen editing technique. Breeden moves into and out of themself, creating gaping holes within the body, and new appendages through movement that milks the visual and finds just the right kind of simplicity, textures, and pace. In the artist talkback, breeden said their work firstly provokes a question: what conversations can we have about performance if the subject is fluid and opaque? What comes to the surface when breeden is separated from the usual gender and race labels audiences ascribe to them? It’s difficult to describe the kind of impact each choice made in the movement, editing, and sound in this film has on the viewer. Seek out the next screening to experience this moving, eerie work yourself. The festival concludes with Pioneers Go East Collective’s own film, blue highway, that uses visual and danced representation of poetry to subvert the traditional Americanah, solo road travel narrative. They do so with impeccable editing, simple and grounded performance, and beautiful use of sound. 

Pioneers Go East Collective, “blue highway“,Photo: Joy Burklund & Adele Overby

Each artist in this series finds their own way to represent the experience of transformation through physical practice and continual action. Each film is tied to the next by its representation of transformation as active. Transformation is an undertaking; something that is done again and again and again by the subject to find understanding. Transformation is not something that just happens to somebody, it is a movement, a dance…

Pioneers Go East Collective’s third annual Out-FRONT! Festival, runs from January 7-13, 2025, and is presented in partnership with BAM and Judson Church. The 2025 festival features performances by Miranda Brown + Noa Rui-Piin Weiss, Blaze Ferrer, Kyle Marshall Choreography, Stuart B Meyers, Angie Pittman, jill sigman/thinkdance, and Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett, in addition to the Out-FRONT! Film Series on January 11. Out-FRONT 2025 takes place at BAM Fisher Hillman Studio (321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217) and Judson Church (55 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012). All festival events are free with a suggested donation of $25. Reservations are required and can be made online.

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