Saturday, September 12, 2026 at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Human Resources, Los Angeles
20th anniversary screening of Homotopia (2006) with its sequel Criminal Queers (2015) directed by Eric A. Stanley & Chris E. Vargas Post-screening discussion with the directors and Silky Shah, author of *Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition* (2024). Set sometime in the future-present ***Homotopia*** (2006) chronicles a group of radical queer’s dedicated to exposing the trouble with gay marriage, dismantling the State, undoing Empire, while looking totally fierce. Woven into the story of Yoshi’s adventures in love, resistance, and sex, is a critique of the crushing violence of homonormativity and its deadly perpetuation of US patriotism, conservative kinship structures and affective accumulation. *Homotopia* holds cinematic assumptions hostage through its motley assemblage of never-passing crew. Race, gender, ability and desire are reworked through an anti-colonial take of queer struggle creating a visual rhythm of melancholic utopianism that knows there may be no future but still hopes today is not their last. Love revolution, not State delusion, *Homotopia*. ***Criminal Queers*** (2015) visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. The film advances a vision of our collective liberation by abolishing the structures and systems that confine our hearts, genders, and desires. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan, and Lucy as they fiercely discuss everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. *Criminal Queers* grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined. Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live