Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out

A young lunatic director and his devoted cult of cinema terrorists kidnap a Hollywood movie goddess and force her to star in their radical underground movie.

At first glance, Masters of None could be the home video of a family of neon-pink hooded figures, passing the time with charades, television, and Jiffy Pop on the stove. As in All Together Now, Masters has no dialogue or clear narrative arc, and while the domestic activities seem everyday, they are infused with suggestions of violence and danger.

Shy is a transgender man who leaves his small town after the death of his father, and heads to the big city to live a life of crime. Along the way, he encounters Valentine, a quirky adoptee, in search of his birth mother. An immediate kinship is sparked between these men and they become partners in crime.

A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.

Under a cloudless Los Angeles sky, Kahn—dressed in incongruous heels and a summery dress—runs an electric weed whacker through a hill of overgrown grass.

The Fudgesicle, a solo performative video in which Dodge, playing a fudgesicle, parries with an unseen interlocutor in a stripped-down, monochromatic setting. The deceptively puerile premise eventually serves as a container for an effervescent (and existential) meditation on shape, legibility, and the limits of articulation.