by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
September 5 | 2024
Movies do not exist in a vacuum. They are not just works of art, they exist as a part of the culture that gave birth to them, intrinsically tied to the time and place in which they are made. Some are timeless, resonating beyond the conditions that created them, but it is often impossible to separate them from those conditions, because it not only helps us understand the film, it provides a lens through which to understand the history of their time. What were people thinking, feeling, doing at this moment in time that made this film what it is?
No Other Land | 2024
There will be others who will write far more eloquently about this film than I will, but I think it might be one of the most essential films of our time. No Other Land is a searing and devastatingly urgent portrait of the plight of Palestinians through the eyes of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who form an unlikely friendship covering and protesting the Israeli destruction of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.
A trans woman gets out of bed and pads across the room to the bathroom. She is naked. She goes to the bathroom. She brushes her teeth. It is a ritual I've performed so many times without a second thought, and now I'm watching it in a movie. I am struck by how commonplace this feels, how incredibly normal. I notice that her body isn't that different from mine. This is not a hyper-sexualized porn star; this is a regular transgender woman living a regular life. Our bodies are so often fetishized that it feels wholly transgressive to see a nude trans woman on screen simply existing - not being used as a sex object or an object of pity, just another woman going through motions that feel so mundane yet so familiar.