MQFF: I'm Your Venus (dir. Kimberly Reed)

I’m Your Venus is a movie that does not go overtly into the complicated history of Paris is Burning. Neither as a cultural artefact, nor for its legacy as a story about queer and trans people directed a cis filmmaker. Just as we have long since gone beyond needing Tom Brokaw introducing AIDS to us (lord knows that doesn’t stop filmmakers from using it to educate straight audiences), we also don’t need to be rudimentarily familiarised with Jennie Livingston’s groundbreaking 1990 documentary about the New York City ball scene. By 2025, you either know it or you don’t, and a less trusting filmmaker would hold their viewers’ hands through a history lesson that stops the film cold before it could even begin.

Kimberley Reed doesn’t do that. She’s smart enough to instead weave Paris throughout the narrative of this, her third, feature documentary, allowing those familiar or not to decipher its importance by seeing rather than being so bluntly told. She’s also no doubt entirely aware of the weight that I’m Your Venus will carry with transgender, queer and black/latinx audiences after decades of consternation about Paris is Burning. In her way with I’m Your Venus, Reed gets to give the narrative back a little bit some 35 years later to those who were (depending on who you ask) made famous and/or exploited and/or artistically othered by Livingston. For whatever it’s worth, Livingston is an Executive Producer of this film (alongside Dominique Jackson from Pose) likely due to the sheer amount of Paris is Burning footage that’s repurposed. Maybe it’s a question left to wonder about had she not been tangentially involved.

Either way, I’m Your Venus sings with not just storytelling nous, but authenticity and potent emotional clarity. Reed, who is transgender but also indeed white, allows for transparency and honestly where before there may not have been. I was deeply moved by what Reed was able to pull off here, delicately walking the line of a heterosexual redemption arc within that of a celebratory ode to the icon that is the late Venus Xtravaganza. It would be very easy for Venus’ story to be consumed by that of her brothers and their attempts to (in a way) make amends and in doing so minimise her legacy. I am sure many might actually find it as problematic as its predecessor. But what would it have been without that? Just another biography of talking heads telling us how great she was. We don’t need that—we already have "touch this skin"! Just another true crime doc that revels in trauma? No thank you. Instead, Reed uses Xtravaganza’s story to interrogate complicated familial relationships and shifting attitudes within ethno-communities, celebrates the person and the scene that she was so important to, and bring awareness to what is happening today and why somebody like her was such a shining light to a community consistently under threat and attack. And more! I suspect I’m Your Venus won’t necessarily be the film everybody wants, but in some roundabout way it might be the film we need.

As most will know, Venus Xtravaganza was murdered before the release of Paris is Burning and never got to see the attention that it would bring to her (Indya Moore's Angel on Pose was certainly inspired as a wish-fullfilment of Venus' what-coulda-been). Much like Marsha P. Johnson, her killer was never found (although it was at least ruled a homicide, which was more than Johnson was allowed in death shortly after). Through Venus, we see her three brothers coming together to seek justice and find the responsible person, get her name officially posthumously changed to reflect her chosen identity (in a New Jersey first) and to have the home she was raised in by her grandmother listed as heritage as a symbol for the homes transgender youth need just as much as any other child.

The brothers—John, Joseph and Louis—are documentary gold. They have the same aura of genuineness as Venus did in Paris is Burning. Their journey here is sweet; their words no mere platitudes served up to an audience to nod at with kind reserve. They hold significance and should be a guide to many who by circumstance find themselves watching the movie from a place similar to that of the brothers’ earlier, more selfish selves. Reigning mother of the house of Xtravaganza, Gisele Xtravaganza, is a vital figure, a key bridge between the house of Venus' time and the now where trans people are finally able to fulfil the goals that Venus poignantly hoped for but were cruelly denied—a life, a love, a home, a career. Fashion, dahling. Gia Marie Love briefly features, a nice full circle moment after her breakout as a key subject in Sara Jordenö's Kiki, a 2016 documentary about New York City’s vogueing scene that was positioned as something of a modern-day Paris is Burning.

This is Reed’s third feature, coming seven years after the excellent political expose Dark Money and nearly two decades after her extraordinary debut, Prodigal Sons. She’s three for three. I was also lucky to be able to see the semi-autobiographical opera As One in 2014 at Brooklyn Academy of Music for which she wrote the libretto. I was able to catch this on a big(ish) screen (certainly bigger than any home television that will play it upon its Netflix streaming premiere sometime this year) as a part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival's pride month activities. Reed's formal skills really leapt out. Dava Whisenant and Eric Metzgar's editing is exquisite, criss-crossing between contemporary stories and late ‘80s memories. Similarly, the work of cinematographers Josh Weinstein and Rose Bush shines. Like Paris is Burning, whatever your thoughts on it, the two share a real desire in capturing the faces of trans people in ways that unapologetically reveal their wants and desires. Reed’s film captures these New Jersey and New York locations with a real sense of cinematic punch, contrasting the vibrancy of the street, the power of protest and the decadent modern day ball scene with that of its corporate board rooms and suburban drudgery. In one of I’m Your Venus’ best moments, mirroring Paris is Burning’s pier shots, the brothers looks out over the Hudson River towards Jersey City from a high-rise office tower and it’s as if Venus herself is emanating over them all. Corny? Perhaps. But beautiful nonetheless. Love trans people and your world will be instantly funnier, more colourful, more musical, more more.