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Framing Agnes by Chase Joynt
Zachary Drucker in Framing Agnes by Chase Joynt. | photo by Ava Benjamin Shorr.

Kino Lorber will release Chase Joynt’s innovative hybrid film Framing Agnes, which explores the lived experiences of trans people past and present through reenactments of transcripts from a UCLA gender study conducted in the 1960s. The film will make its New York premiere at NewFest on June 5, followed by a theatrical release from Kino Lorber in December.

The solo directorial debut of Chase Joynt, who previously co-directed No Ordinary Man, a documentary portrait of jazz musician and trans cultural icon Billy Tipton, Framing Agnes is based on Joynt’s 2020 short and made its World Premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award. It features a cast of trans performers and academics that includes Jules Gill-Peterson, Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, Zackary Drucker, Max Wolf Valerio, Silas Howard, and Stephen Ira.

Agnes, the pioneering, pseudonymized, transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history. In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt explores where and how her platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed – one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes. Through a collaborative practice of re-imagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans healthcare. Joynt’s signature form-rupturing style radically re-envisions the imposition of the frame on the cultural memory of transness through his brilliantly crafted, communally-driven excavation. This reclamation tears away with remarkable precision the myth of isolation as the mode of existence of transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.

Watch the trailer for Framing Agnes

“As a long time fan and consumer of the innovative, agile and impactful titles curated and distributed by Kino Lorber, I couldn’t think of a better place and partner for our film,” said director Chase Joynt.

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