Gender Troublemakers / Face/Off / Trans Hero

Gender Troublemakers, 1993, 28 min
Dir: Mirha-Soleil Ross, Xanthra Phillippa
"We are two gender queens, gender outlaws, trans-dykes, gender troublemakers" so begins this intimate portrait of the video makers, two kick-ass radical transgender activists living in Toronto. Jeanne and Xanthra publish Gendertrash, a transgender zine, and give the dish on gay male misogyny and all of its complex articulations in contemporary gay culture.

Face/Off, 2024, 16 min
Dir: Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina
“Face/Off” int ertwines the narrative of monstrosity — Ruin, Release, Rebirth, the narrative similar to the transsexual cutting as caring. The video is a carousel of Monsters: fictional — Frankenstein, Onryō or the Japanese vengeful spirits — and real — the great late French sex symbol Alain Delon with his ruthless beauty and grandezza, and the maelstrom of doctors guarding the gates to facial reconstructive surgery under the umbrella of “gender-affirming care.” “Face/Off” weaves in texts on monstrosity from Stryker and Preciado while threading auto-theory of my own phrenological experience in the surgeon’s office in the pursuit of the facial masculinization surgery, stitching my own Frankensteinian monster. Let the trans-flesh become the trans-image — now on screen. 

Trans Hero, 2024, 53 min
Dir: Evo Smilla S. Sidney, Sol Amanda Wendel
Prod: Ane Sofie Vennize Andersen
Trans Hero explores gender and identity seen through the eyes of transgender children and children with gender-diverse parents. In a soft, dreamlike scenography, we meet a group of Danish kids between the ages 5-13. Throughout the movie, we're invited into their minds as we learn about the joys, sorrows and challenges that come with growing up and into your authentic self, no matter the cost. Trans Hero is directed by trans and non-binary debut directors Sol A. Wendel and Evo Smilla S. Sidney. The crew behind the film consists almost exclusively of transgender, non-binary and femme individuals.

Jona Wolf studied architecture at Studio Greg Lynn and Studio Wolf D. Prix and graduated in 2015. Jona Wolf is Alumni in Residence at AIL in September and October. During their residency at AIL, Jona will create a series of works exploring how cultural body norms and beauty standards reinforce the gender binary. The project aims to empower the gender fluidity of trans people while also raising awareness of how gender norms affect and restrict everyone in society.