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Maggots and Men / Pariah

Two people laughing together.
August 21, 2023 - 7:30 pm
In-person: 
Intro by Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer. Q&A between features with filmmaker Cary Cronenwett, moderated by curator Caden Mark Gardner.


Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.


Maggots and Men

U.S., 2009

A work that conjures the old Soviet film technique and similar pastiche works by Guy Maddin, Cary Cronenwett’s spirited revisionist period film places transmasculine bodies at the radical heart of the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion. Creatively reimagining the uprising, the story contrasts a performative theater troupe that narrates moments of the story with scenes of the rebellion against the autocracy of the Bolshevik Party. Featuring the largest cast of trans actors in a film, Maggots and Men plays with cinema and history to tell a gender defiant story that is both playful and subversive.

Digital video, b&w, 53 min. Director: Cary Cronenwett. Screenwriter: Ilona Berger, Cary Cronenwett, Blake Nemec. With: Stormy Henry Knight, Travis Clough, Scout Festa.


Estimated start time: 9 p.m.

Pariah

U.S., 2011

Dee Rees’ tender feature debut is a rich and vulnerable queer coming-of-age story about an African American butch lesbian having to face familial homophobia and the realization that the people she loves can hurt and disappoint her. Alike is a promising poet and good student who is hiding her sexual identity from her parents. When she is forced to make friends with a girl from church, she develops a serious crush that feels like the beginning of her sexual awakening and her first taste of true love. Adapted from her award-winning short, Rees’ film deftly and compassionately captures the fraught and transformative experience of a gender non-conforming adolescence.

DCP, color, 86 min. Director: Dee Rees. Screenwriter: Dee Rees. With: Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans, Aasha Davis.