Filmmaker Chase Joynt is open to a "shift to the terms of engagement," as he puts it, when it comes to considering the lives and histories of trans people. As much as his new documentary, Framing Agnes, is about an assortment of people from the 1950s and '60s, the film strives to interrogate how it views those stories. It's part general rumination on an assortment of details, and part meditation on its own non-fiction methods.
Joynt and his collaborators unearthed an archive from the files of UCLA professor Harold Garfinkle. These include transcripts of conversations the sociologist had with trans people from the mid-20th century. Most "iconic" among them — a term examined by the film's main on-screen source, historian Jules Gill-Peterson — is Agnes Torres, a woman who, as presented very briefly in the film, managed to receive gender-affirming surgery by claiming intersex status.
Agnes's story is presented in part as a staged interview, answers pulled and adapted from the Garfinkle transcripts. She isn't the only one to receive this treatment; Framing Agnes builds out a few of these conversations. Trans performers come in to embody lives from six or seven decades earlier, playing out the sometimes tense interactions with Garfinkle. The performers also share their thoughts on their subjects and observations from their own lives spent dealing with similar issues.
The in-interview performances aren't immersive, but that gives its own effect. The interview format, with visual reference to a period Mike Wallace TV interview, seems chosen for a pair of reasons. On-screen, it's discussed how TV interviews have been a space where different ideas around gender could be expressed, in an environment with a lot of conflict like a daytime talk show. At the same time, there is a sense of craft and construction to the whole environment.
That level of artifice links with the difficulties drawn out by talking-head interviews with Gill-Peterson, who's listed as an executive producer. She has the concerns of a modern historian when it comes to trying to tell the stories of people from the past and how we place them in our present-day context.
In looking at that, Framing Agnes isn't afraid to bring up a whole host of connection points. In its brief runtime, the subjects touch on many issues and events, discussing Christine Jorgensen and Laverne Cox, sexuality and gender, the cross-section of cross-dressing, trans people, drag performers, and more.
The film naturally recognizes the gravitas of Georgia, one of Garfinkle's subjects who was a Black trans woman. (It doesn't hurt that the actress performing Georgia's part, Angelica Ross, easily gives the best performance.) Even in discussing Georgia's situation, Gill-Peterson is quick to warn that we risk overwriting the life of a real woman with concerns and thoughts from the present.
We have a film that wants to reflect on its own methods and is designed to frustrate in interesting ways. Other parts feel frustrating in less interesting ways. Some moments are dull, conventional documentary choices. There are plenty of shots of Joynt thoughtfully listening to a source or Gill-Peterson parking her Prius and experiencing the UCLA campus. They feel like a film searching for a personal connection, even as the film fights these kinds of connections. The largest gambit, of staging these interviews and eventually acknowledging the artifice of the event, echoes a few recent documentaries and doesn't express the filmmaker's difficulty in a new way.
If part of Framing Agnes is about considering the lives and circumstances of those in the past when they reflect our own in some way, the film highlights the limitations and difficulties of doing so, one way or another.
Joynt and his collaborators unearthed an archive from the files of UCLA professor Harold Garfinkle. These include transcripts of conversations the sociologist had with trans people from the mid-20th century. Most "iconic" among them — a term examined by the film's main on-screen source, historian Jules Gill-Peterson — is Agnes Torres, a woman who, as presented very briefly in the film, managed to receive gender-affirming surgery by claiming intersex status.
Agnes's story is presented in part as a staged interview, answers pulled and adapted from the Garfinkle transcripts. She isn't the only one to receive this treatment; Framing Agnes builds out a few of these conversations. Trans performers come in to embody lives from six or seven decades earlier, playing out the sometimes tense interactions with Garfinkle. The performers also share their thoughts on their subjects and observations from their own lives spent dealing with similar issues.
The in-interview performances aren't immersive, but that gives its own effect. The interview format, with visual reference to a period Mike Wallace TV interview, seems chosen for a pair of reasons. On-screen, it's discussed how TV interviews have been a space where different ideas around gender could be expressed, in an environment with a lot of conflict like a daytime talk show. At the same time, there is a sense of craft and construction to the whole environment.
That level of artifice links with the difficulties drawn out by talking-head interviews with Gill-Peterson, who's listed as an executive producer. She has the concerns of a modern historian when it comes to trying to tell the stories of people from the past and how we place them in our present-day context.
In looking at that, Framing Agnes isn't afraid to bring up a whole host of connection points. In its brief runtime, the subjects touch on many issues and events, discussing Christine Jorgensen and Laverne Cox, sexuality and gender, the cross-section of cross-dressing, trans people, drag performers, and more.
The film naturally recognizes the gravitas of Georgia, one of Garfinkle's subjects who was a Black trans woman. (It doesn't hurt that the actress performing Georgia's part, Angelica Ross, easily gives the best performance.) Even in discussing Georgia's situation, Gill-Peterson is quick to warn that we risk overwriting the life of a real woman with concerns and thoughts from the present.
We have a film that wants to reflect on its own methods and is designed to frustrate in interesting ways. Other parts feel frustrating in less interesting ways. Some moments are dull, conventional documentary choices. There are plenty of shots of Joynt thoughtfully listening to a source or Gill-Peterson parking her Prius and experiencing the UCLA campus. They feel like a film searching for a personal connection, even as the film fights these kinds of connections. The largest gambit, of staging these interviews and eventually acknowledging the artifice of the event, echoes a few recent documentaries and doesn't express the filmmaker's difficulty in a new way.
If part of Framing Agnes is about considering the lives and circumstances of those in the past when they reflect our own in some way, the film highlights the limitations and difficulties of doing so, one way or another.