School of Quilombismo: Desire Lines

In cooperation with HKW

School of Quilombismo: Gender Euphoria is a roaming program that embodies and resonates with imaginative, wayward, unorthodox, and self-determined pedagogical and knowledge practices. It manifests annually in different formats—from boat tours to walks, from concerts to film screenings. This year’s edition revolves around the launch of the English and German translation of pedagogue Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos’s book Pedagogias das Travestilidades (Pedagogies of travesti liberation). 


Desire Lines
Jules Rosskam, USA, 2024, 81 min. English

Followed by a talk with Jules Rosskam and Zoya (Casa Kuà)

Desire Lines is a hybrid documentary blending candid interviews, archival materials, and narrative fiction as a framework for exploring the complicated and often unwritten history of transmasculine sexuality.
The fictional story centers on Ahmad, an Iranian expat who arrived in the US at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Now in his 60s, concealing his trans identity for decades has meant distancing himself from intimacy. Ahmad comes to the LGBTQ archives to explore his latent homosexuality and engage in fantasy to reimagine his life as an out, gay trans man. He is assisted by Kieran, a twenty-something nonbinary archivist who is immersed in queer culture and trans community. Though they come from radically  different cultures, their bond is strengthened by a shared fascination with Lou Sullivan, a gay transgender AIDS activist.

The film pivots between fantasy, fiction, and fact using the letters and interviews of Lou Sullivan as the historical core. Interspersed throughout are interviews with a diverse group of transmen across the US, candidly discussing the evolution of their desires and illuminating their struggles with gender (non)conformity, fetishization, transphobia, safer sex, and sexual racism. (HKW)

Jules Rosskam is a filmmaker, educator and interdisciplinary artist based in the US.

Zoya is a member of Casa Kuà, a space organized by Trans* and Non – Binary Black Indigenous People of color to make health more accessible to other Trans*, Inter, Non-Binary and Queer people.