Episode Details

Celebrate Pride Month with CUNY Queer Portraits on Frame by Frame, a vibrant showcase of films by queer filmmakers across CUNY campuses envisioned by Edward Miller at the College of Staten Island, highlighting powerful stories and diverse perspectives from faculty, graduate students, and alumni.

Reflecting the diversity of CUNY itself, these films span a wide range of backgrounds, identities, and creative approaches, mirroring the richness of its campuses. This showcase brings together queer artists and activists whose work reflects the creativity and lived experiences of queer communities.

Catch the full showcase on CUNY TV and right here on YouTube from June 5–July 2.
Featured films include — In & Out, Cutting Room Floor #1, Make a Declaration, Voces Transcendentes, Candy’s Sun, Las Olas, NY Counterpoint, In The Body, I Want to Leave a Legacy, and The Animal in You.

Chapters
00:00 Meet the Filmmakers: Queer Voices Across CUNY
01:40 In the Body | Experimental Documentary, Family Healing & Intergenerational Trauma
07:22 In & Out | Coming Out Stories: Identity, Vulnerability & Queer Experience on Camera
13:44 The Animal in You | Mentorship, Music & Artistic Legacy
18:01 — Capturing Legacy, End-of-Life Documentary & Preserving Personal Histories
22:09 — What is CUNY Queer Portraits?
22:54 — What’s Next

Meet the Guests

We’re thrilled to have this conversation on queer storytelling led by Alexandra Juhasz, a filmmaker, scholar, Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, and video activist whose work has helped shape queer media studies and independent filmmaking. Best known for her work on The Watermelon Woman, a landmark of Black queer cinema and the first feature film written and directed by a Black lesbian, Juhasz joins us today to lead a conversation on queer storytelling and share a deeply personal film of her own. I Want to Leave a Legacy, created with her late friend Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, is a moving testament to friendship, AIDS-era activism, and the power of community memory.

Samantha Alvarez is an award-winning filmmaker and painter, a two-time graduate of City College of New York, and now a two-time Frame by Frame filmmaker. An alum of the Bronx Documentary Center Films Fellowship, NBCU Academy Fellowship, and Third World Newsreel Workshop, her experimental documentary In The Body earned six awards, including the 2022 Outstanding Female Content Creator Award from New York Women in Film & Television. We're excited to welcome Samantha back to Frame by Frame and learn more about her creative journey and approach to filmmaking.

Eden Martinez is a Nuyorican queer filmmaker whose work centers women, LGBTQ+ and POC folx through a jubilant and visually harmonious lens. Exploring themes of identity and intersectionality, Eden creates films that celebrate the richness and complexity of underrepresented experiences. Eden is the director of In & Out.

Mariano Wainsztein is a filmmaker, composer, and educator whose work operates at the intersection of documentary film, music education, and social practice. He teaches Film and Media Studies at Hunter College and LaGuardia Community College. Mariano is the director of The Animal in You.

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