Super-8 was, for a while, the choice home movie format for many families. It allowed for the monumentalizing of moments through the creation of physical memories to be shared between friends and families. Its accessible format allowed broad communities to hold on to something that lasted beyond their own transient memory of that moment. Looking through this lens, using this cultural context, and preserving the unique qualities of Super-8 were important to me in this piece.

I wanted to take this idea of an amateur filmmaker in the sense of a family member recording memories through home movies, and queer that in the form of a chosen family member recording those memories through a different lens. The ‘gaze’ in this film is not a perverted familial gaze that conveys gender and expectations, that imposes upon the individual, but a truly ‘accepting’ gaze that sees the ‘subject’ the way that they wish to be seen, with understanding and empathy from their own community. These home movies are also familial documentation, and this film serves as documentation of the time that Kiera and I spent by the river, an ever-important thing as queer and especially trans lives continue to be erased and hidden.

I wanted to explore this theme of memory as non-linear by recreating childhood play and exploration in an authentic way as young adults. This blends who we are now with who we were as children, not directly putting ourselves in old memories but making new ones that are reminiscent. It directly ties into how the film explores queer ecology by cutting between the environment and the ‘subject’ - the river flowing reflects this exploration of time. The river constantly flows, but often doubles back on itself, curls in on itself, forms eddies and swirls, splashes, and flows around obstacles. A fish swims in place, moss flows on rocks - all of these things are subject to the forces of water and time. I hand-processed the film, adding intimacy to this physical memory as I shook, washed, and hung it. This intimacy shows through in the materiality of the piece: the scratches caused by agitation while using homemade non-toxic eco-developer, the small blank sections of overlap from the film lying on top of itself that are barely visible in the final piece. Just as memory is so personal, this film is the same way due to the direct impact I had on both the preservation of the image and the slight destruction of it.

This is part of the exploration of the word ‘transient’, as we are both ‘in transition’ mentally, physically, sometimes socially, and constantly changing. Our current self will not last, but the film as a physical object will endure, preserving this ephemeral thing that is memory. This piece was filmed in a few hours and is only 3 minutes, both brief and temporary.

It was important to me that this piece be silent to honor the themes of memory and transience further. I remember experiences in a highlight reel of pictures, which does not include sound. The film being in this form allows the audience to project their own experiences onto the film and envision different auditory cues in various ways, to a certain extent, changing the experience for every viewer.