I Remember the Crows (Gustavo Vinagre, 2017) (Patreon)

As hard as it may be to believe, even in 2019 there remains a significant dearth of films, television shows, or really any form of media in which trans folks are telling their own stories. This is why a show like "Pose," or the music of Sarah Jane Grace and Against Me!, is so revolutionary, even while so much of its subject matter is refreshingly mundane. For context, we have to compare this lack of by-trans, for-trans (and others) stories to the virtual obsession with trans lives that one finds not only in the mainstream media, but in the muck of the Christian right. As journalist Katelyn Burns put it, "I really implore those of you on the left to understand that the right's obsession with trans people is 50x what you imagine it to be." So it's not just about visibility. It's about combating the most heinous untruths.

In this context, it seems misleading to call I Remember the Crows Gustavo Vinagre's film, although he is the credited director, and it seems clear from the finished product that he had a significant hand in conceiving of its overall shape. However, Crows belongs to Julia Katherine, the performer and raconteuse at its center. Julia is an actress and filmmaker, a screenwriter, a former pornographer, born of a Brazilian mother and a Japanese father, an unapologetic movie buff, and above all, for the purposes of this film, an insomniac.

Working with Vinagre through the night, largely because she cannot get to sleep, Julia tells stories from her life. She explains how her great uncle was the first person to treat her like a girl, but also molested her. She discusses her fraught relationship with her mother, who was once a free spirit but has since become "born again." She talks about the prejudices she's faced as a trans woman, but also the joys she's experienced in her life. As Julia puts it, every time she's considered suicide, she's had to face the fact that she loves being alive.

I Remember the Crows immediately calls to mind Shirley Clarke's classic Portrait of Jason, although it is not nearly as rigorous in its construction. I was also reminded of Reno Dakota's unjustly forgotten portrait of Jeffrey Strouth, American Fabulous, although Crows, like Julia herself, does not rely on comedy to the same degree. But unlike those films, I Remember the Crows concludes by taking stock of the possible implications of the project itself. Julia wonders whether she is taking part in a self-exoticization, helping Vinagre to provide fodder for thos cis viewers hungry for salacious details from the lives of trans women. By raising this question, Julia turns the lens back on her director, and her audience. She is telling her story, and we have to take responsibility for what we do with it.