Framing Agnes

Name: Framing Agnes
Genre: Documentary
Released: December 2, 2022
Duration: 75 min
Rating: 69
Cast: Carmen Carrera, Chase Joynt, Christine Jorgensen, Harold Garfinkel, Jules Gill-Peterson

2022

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Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews

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Framing Agnes

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Movie Details & Credits

Kino Lorber | Release Date: December 2, 2022 | Not Rated

Starring: Carmen Carrera, Chase Joynt, Christine Jorgensen, Harold Garfinkel, Jules Gill-Peterson, Katie Couric, Laverne Cox, Silas Howard, Stephen Ira, Zackary Drucker

Summary: The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blendsThe pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt uses Agnes’s story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers – including Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, and Zackary Drucker – take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans history. This collective reclamation breaks down the myth of isolation among transgender history-makers, breathing new life into a lineage of collaborators and conspirators who have been forgotten for far too long.… Expand

Director: Chase Joynt

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 75 min

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Critic Reviews

Sabina Dana Plasse

Dec 2, 2022

The archival footage, reenactment, well-executed cinematography, and stunning wardrobe and makeup allow Framing Agnes to linger in your thoughts much past its ending. Joynt created an exquisite beauty that banishes the notions that trans is wrong or dirty and highlights how it is wildly misunderstood. Read full review

Barry Hertz

Dec 7, 2022

While there is an early sense in Joynt’s film that it is simply fun to ape the environs of bygone television eras, the re-enactments ultimately work on a narrative level, too. There are intersecting layers to Joynt’s film whose thematic and contextual conversations with one another would be lost were he to simply line one conventional talking head up after another. Read full review

Gary Goldstein

Dec 16, 2022

The docudrama Framing Agnes is a fascinating, multidimensional, mosaic-like glimpse at transgender life from the 1950s to today as interpreted by — and through — a group of transmasculine and transfeminine performers and creatives and one uniquely impressive academic. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Matt Fagerholm

Dec 2, 2022

What makes Chase Joynt’s first solo outing as a feature director, Framing Agnes, such essential viewing is the extent to which it sheds new light on the legacy of trans Americans from the past century and beyond, whose voices are only just beginning to emerge from the vault of obscurity. Read full review

The Film Stage Jose Solís

Dec 8, 2022

Framing Agnes is not a film about ultimates. It doesn’t pretend to have answers to all the insightful questions it poses; instead it just brims with the thrill of discovery. Read full review

Shayna Maci Warner

Dec 2, 2022

While the conceit is clever, these are not new storytelling techniques for documentary or fiction, and in Framing Agnes, they lack a certain follow-through. Read full review

Teo Bugbee

Dec 2, 2022

The documentary reminds its audience that it’s impossible to truly know people based on their responses to medical interviews. But this approach unfortunately prevents the film from achieving either catharsis or understanding. Read full review

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