A still from the film City of Lost Souls
City of Lost Souls
Screening and Talk with Juliet Jacques
In Rosa Von Praunheim’s 1983 trans musical spectacular “City of Lost Souls,” iconic Jayne County says, “I don’t want to move to Australia and sell my diamond rings. I’m going to move in with a Reagan and go out with a bang!” (I imagine this is something our beloved Tom said too, when he left Australia for Manhattan, but more on this later).
County’s brush upon Reagan is just one stand out moment of a monologue that is quotable from beginning to end. The culminating line is, “I want to be the one to push the button!” If you haven’t felt like that at some point in your life then you’re basic! County gives a sermon and it’s best you sit up straight and listen up. But anyway, in all seriousness, tonight, Union Docs is screening Praunheim’s film that “captures a unique position within the development of transgender theory.” Juliet Jacques, author of Trans: A Memoir “will discuss how City of Lost Souls has inspired her writing and her process of creating trans art that faithfully documents the messiness of her experience, subverting the transition genre designed for the cis-gaze.”
“At the time it was released, City of Lost Souls was criticized for its messy storyline. Jacques argues that the film has aged remarkably well; in fact it’s flawed or Warholian insistence on character and improvisation forever preserved a nuanced exploration of the alienation that comes with being a gender or sexual minority. It’s fascinating to see the debates in which they worked out their gender identities staged before online communities, transgender-specific fanzines or Queer/Transgender Studies courses — all crucial to the development of organized transgender politics,” Jacques wrote in her review of the film.”
If you are unfamiliar with Jacques writing, she is most widely known for her Guardian piece that chronicled her initial reality post-sexual reassignment surgery, but her book is peppered with all the right types of wit, political commentary and personality. I’m just about 40 pages in and but I feel confident saying that you shouldn’t miss her discussion to follow. Jacques can teach for sure you a thing or two.
