2024
2-channel video
4K video, color, sound
80 minutes
Dimensions variable

Ricerche is a 5 part video series that steps off Pier Paolo Pasolini’s brilliant 1963 film, Comizi d’Amore, to stage a contemporary inquiry into the “sexual problem” in the United States. While the political climate in post-war Italy in 1963 was deeply distinct from that of the United States in this contemporary moment, both are sites of a persistent political condition in which so-called value-based policy and ideology act out symptomatically to cover up underlying economic and political vulnerabilities.

Ricerche: four is composed of interviews with three groups of LGBTQIA elders, filmed in Philadelphia, PA., Dowelltown, TN and in Los Angeles, CA. In joyful, illuminating and deeply moving conversations, participants reflect on their relationships to community, family, activism, sex and sexuality as well as to the changing political landscapes. While not all participants identify as elders, they each speak from deep and long experiences that shape their understandings of the social, political and economic promises and possibilities as well as of the obstacles for them and their communities. These conversations make an inspired proposition for the importance of intergenerational collaboration, dialogue and care.  

Participants from Philadelphia, PA: Roosevelt Adams, Craig E.F. Alston, Esq., Fernando Chang-Muy, José Demarco, Lorrie Kim, Andrea Lamour-Harrington, Gary Hines, Nathaniel O’Neal, Charita Powell, Cookie Quinones

Participants from Dowelltown, TN: Tana Comer, Gabby Haze, Iris Pine (Jan Laude), Susan Lewis, Fred Brungard (Sr. SoamiMish), Merril Mushroom, Maryanne Poposky, Cat Purdom, Jeff Schuler (Jeffbi), SPREE, Lucy Marshall White

Participants from Los Angeles, CA: Judith Branzburg, Marie Cartier, SheAh Prince Eternal, Verónica Flores, Ridge Gonzalez, Rita C. Gonzales, Loretta Lorraine, Nu’Diamond, Robin Podolsky, Elena Popp, Bamby Salcedo, Simone Wallace, Carolyn Weathers, Queen Unique Ziar

Production Team:
Assistant Director: Brooke O’Harra
Director of Photography (PA & TN): Jess Bennett
Director of Photography (CA): Michelle Clementine
Production Manager: Althea M. Rao
Outreach Coordinator: Rami George
Additional Outreach: Sydney Canty, Merril Mushroom, Gary Hines
Camera operators: Aly Spengler, Athena Kulb, Andi Obarski
Production Sound Recorders: M. Asli Dukan, Galen B. Milender, Vero Lopez
Key Grips: Katie Harkins, Charlie Agnew, Jordan Stossel
Production Photography: Nick Moncy, Alice Hayes, Sydney Canty
Production Assistants: Sarah Kim, Ash Kennon, Agnes Borinsky

Special thanks: David Acosta, Suz Atlas, Lynn Ballen, Tim Belknap, Mary Groce, Julia Meltzer, David Thorne, Jeanne Vaccaro, lexi welch, Fortune and Ed Miller and the residents at the John C. Anderson Apartments