Possibilities for Humanity: Jake Yuzna on Gender Explorations in His New Film
Posted By: Leslie-Stonebraker
http://www.nypress.com/blog-7712-possibilities-for-humanity-jake-yuzna-on-gender-explorations-in-his-new-film.html (http://www.nypress.com/blog-7712-possibilities-for-humanity-jake-yuzna-on-gender-explorations-in-his-new-film.html)
Filmmaker Jake Yuzna's fist feature Open has generated a lot of buzz. Using a cast of non-actors, Yuzna chronicles the internal and external journeys of pandrogynous, transsexual and inter-sexed characters as they try to find love in the twin cities. Yuzna's unique art school background results in a visually stunning film, tonally very different from Hollywood's version of queer cinema. On Friday, the New Museum presents a screening of Open, followed by a conversation with Yuzna and his inspiration Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. We caught up with Yuzna, who wrote, directed and produced the film, to get a sneak peek.
snip
Tell me about the film.
It's composed of two love stories. One is about a couple that are a pandrogynous couple. And that's this very new approach to the idea of identity and relationships and gender where a couple have plastic surgery to combine each other's features because they see themselves as two halves of one whole identity. So there's a pandrogynous couple, and they meet a young hermaphrodite while one of them is recovering from plastic surgery and they end up on this love triangle road trip together. And then the other story is about a young trans man, someone who is born a woman but then has plastic surgery to become a man, who meets a young biological gay man. And they fall in love and the trans man gets pregnant. The film stars all real people from these communities, so it's real pandrogynous people, real trans, real inter-sexed people.