Author: Fara

In the summer of 2013, I lost my job at a yuppie craft ice cream shop and sold my guitar, fancy uke, and my DSLR to make rent. I was living in warehouse in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia and, despite living with two gay men, I still felt like a pariah being a baby punk queer Latina. I lived in an incompletely built room with the small circle-A drawn my door and a wall filled with zines, screen-printed posters by Katrina Clark, photographs by Elle Perez, and a large charcoal drawing of Goya. I spent my days listening to punk, R&B and blues tapes from my tape deck. When I realized I wouldn’t have enough money for next month’s rent, I was promised a small corner of a studio apartment West Philadelphia. When that fell through, I found myself on the porch of Sass Squat.
Sass Squat existed for 8 years, housing majority QPOC femmes, gender non-conforming folks and queerdo travelers. It was my home for 9 months before we got evicted in May 2014, and I still thrive with the support system that was created in that time. Upon watching Alli Logout’s film Lucid Noon Sunset Blush at the 2015 MIX NYC – NY Queer Experimental Film Festival, I couldn’t help but to relive the journey of living at Sass Squat. The film’s “coming-to-queer” narrative, focusing on Black and Brown femmes, presented a representation I had hardly ever experienced as a film goer. It follows the protagonist Micha as she is introduced to the lives of QPOCS in Texas who hold space for her for the very first time in her life.
Lucid Moon Sunset Blush takes place in the thick of Texas, focusing on the effects of small towns on queers and the shifts that take place when they move to larger cities. Houses, collectives, squats, punkish houses and informal structures become spaces of growth and care that our families, towns, and schools couldn’t extend to us. The opening scene is the initiation of Micha into the House. House Mother “Heart Throb” sits on her futon throne as she’s lit with flush pink lighting, surrounded by signs that read “Femme Supremacy,” “Black Trans Lives Matter” and “Black Women Matter.” Around her is a symmetric display of televisions, large speakers, and two Money Lovers counting money. Throb expresses tough love, yet promises care and compassion for Micha, who was just abandoned by her family for watching lesbian movies on Netflix.

 ALEX RIVERA’s SLEEP DEALER +
In his first feature, our long-time ally Alex (PapaPapa) Rivera oh-so-artfully turns speculative fiction into a terrifying critique of a paranoid future. This Sundance-winner spins a fantastic narrative on the dystopian outcomes of globalization, particularly the privatization of water and the place of immigrant labor in the neo-liberal economy. Rivera’s wildly imaginative fable is set in tomorrow’s fearfully militarized world, a technological work-camp marked by closed borders, virtual labor, and a worldwide cyber-network that joins minds and experiences. When a Mexican youth’s family is wiped out by a misguided drone, he must head North. But migrant workers cannot cross the new world border–it’s been sealed off! Instead, he ends up in a human/cyborg “virtual” factory on the frontier, where he connects his body to a robot in the US. Tragically marginalized upon its ‘08 release, Alex recently regained control of his potent parable, and immediately dispatched it to OC with his blessings.