Tourmaline

The artist walks through a garden, with additional footage featuring Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson.

JOY RUN, a film by Tourmaline, continues the creative reimagining of athletics as a gender-inclusive space.

Atlantic is a Sea of Bones is a short film drawing from the Lucille Clifton poem of the same name that follows Egyptt LaBejia, an NYC based performer through the 80s, 90s, and 2000's in NYC. The haunting and otherwordly film set to an original score features small every day acts of refusal, resistance, and existence—such as performance and self expression—that have a tremendous impact on the world. The film reveals how the historical and systemic violence, like the killing and policing of black queer and trans life, continue to haunt our contemporary landscapes and is inextricably linked to the ongoing AIDS epidemic and the black queer/trans spaces shaped so intimately by HIV/AIDS, including the spaces where we come together and make life together: public spaces and nightlife spaces.

“You have to find your own way to strike back.” Black trans elder and legendary activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy describes how everyday personal acts fuel her political activism. Released in conjunction with Trans Day of Resilience/Remembrance, this short, directed by Reina Gossett with art by Micah Bazant and animation by Pamela Chavez was produced by Reina Gossett, Hope Dector, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

It's a hot summer day in June 1969. Marsha plans a birthday party for herself, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha's best friend, suggests they meet at Stonewall instead, where Marsha can perform. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha is among the first to fight back.

It's a hot summer day in June 1969. Marsha plans a birthday party for herself, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha's best friend, suggests they meet at Stonewall instead, where Marsha can perform. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha is among the first to fight back.

It's a hot summer day in June 1969. Marsha plans a birthday party for herself, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha's best friend, suggests they meet at Stonewall instead, where Marsha can perform. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha is among the first to fight back.

A reimagining of Marsha P. Johnson’s story told by friend Agosto Machado. The film captures their shared life of contradictions—from violence to exuberance—and Johnson’s strength through joy, transmuting the mundane into a larger-than-life experience.

Tourmaline is an experimental portraitist whose subject is Black trans women. This impressionistic piece concerns Mary Jones, who worked at a New York brothel in the early nineteenth century and was described as a “man-monster” in a tabloid-style lithograph that was published after her arrest, in 1836, for robbery.

Tourmaline is an experimental portraitist whose subject is Black trans women. This impressionistic piece concerns Mary Jones, who worked at a New York brothel in the early nineteenth century and was described as a “man-monster” in a tabloid-style lithograph that was published after her arrest, in 1836, for robbery.

Tourmaline is an experimental portraitist whose subject is Black trans women. This impressionistic piece concerns Mary Jones, who worked at a New York brothel in the early nineteenth century and was described as a “man-monster” in a tabloid-style lithograph that was published after her arrest, in 1836, for robbery.

A fictional story inspired by a newspaper clipping from the 1830s about a trans woman named Mary Jones who was arrested for stealing a man’s wallet. The film is set in Seneca Village, an autonomous settlement of free Blacks and Irish immigrants located on what is known today as Central Park where Jones, a gifted conjurer who can see visions of future events and alter reality with her well crafted spells, fends off the white city officials who want to take control of the land she and her community call home. Here, Tourmaline answers the call of “critical fabulation” theorized by the influential historian Saidiya Hartman, inventing the narrative that doesn’t exist in the historical archive for Jones.

A fictional story inspired by a newspaper clipping from the 1830s about a trans woman named Mary Jones who was arrested for stealing a man’s wallet. The film is set in Seneca Village, an autonomous settlement of free Blacks and Irish immigrants located on what is known today as Central Park where Jones, a gifted conjurer who can see visions of future events and alter reality with her well crafted spells, fends off the white city officials who want to take control of the land she and her community call home. Here, Tourmaline answers the call of “critical fabulation” theorized by the influential historian Saidiya Hartman, inventing the narrative that doesn’t exist in the historical archive for Jones.

The artist walks through a garden, with additional footage featuring Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson.