Fabulation and Psychedelics in Queer and Trans Cinema

Slava Greenberg takes us on an extensive trip through the history of various non-binary makers from the American underground between 1960 and now. He devotes attention particularly to how these filmmakers – alongside avant-garde film techniques – use psychedelic means and aesthetics to mix reality and fiction, documentary and sci-fi; their aim is to give rise to new forms of filmic experience in which there is scope for non-binary gender expression.

Rough trip

Greenberg has made an exciting selection of clips from well-known and less familiar titles, and takes a deep dive into the socio-cultural significance of the works shown. He starts with material from Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966), a series of live shows in which projections of experimental films and performances by The Velvet Underground took the audience on a rough psychedelic trip through the darker side of the sixties.

We then move through the next decades with a selection of films ranging from Jack Smith’s underground classic Flaming Creatures (1963), Barbara Hammer’s experimental films from the seventies and eighties (including Women I Love and Psychosynthesis), The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003, Apichatpong Weerasethakul & Michael Shaowanasai) – a Thai musical-action-comedy with a queer trans person in the lead role – to Zackary Drucker’s At Least You Know You Exist (2011), a psychedelic mash-up of reality and the subconscious in which the concept of ‘delayed time’ plays a major role.

Alternative realities

By mixing reality, fiction, fact and imaginings, filmmakers from the queer and trans underground seduce the audience to explore alternative realities, Slava Greenberg argues. “By blending reality and fiction, truths, and fabulations, these films invite audiences to explore alternative realities and envision futures beyond restrictive gender binaries and genre distinctions, offering mind and body-altering spectatorship.”

Slava Greenberg is an Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship (Indiana UP, 2023). Currently, Greenberg is writing his second book, Gender Dysphoria: An Unauthorized Biography.