In the latest episode of the new short-form documentary series Folx, nonbinary printmaker Paul DeRuvo is running water over a large sheet of paper, prepping to create a print. The image alone is soothing enough to induce visual ASMR. But when they start explaining how the kids that they work with are curious about why they wear lipstick, the video practically starts humming with a magical glow.
“I always ask them, ‘Well, who else do you know that wears lipstick?’,” DeRuvo muses with a whispery voice and a gentle smile. “Maybe they say their mom. And I say, ‘Well why do you think they wear lipstick?’ They say, ‘To look pretty.’ And I say, ‘Yeah, it’s the same.’” They go on to discuss their relationship to the word “femme,” as each step of their methodical artistic process is lovingly captured until they lift up their finished print from the press.
DeRuvo is just one of 10 subjects that make up the first iteration of Folx, created by director Krystalline Armendariz and executive producer Julia Reagan. Inspired by the social documentary photo project Humans of New York, the filmmakers set out to capture a wide breadth of queer experiences with with care and intimacy, resulting in a series that’s refreshing in its candor.
When casting the series, the creators aimed to highlight a diverse swath of queer New Yorkers, most of them POC and many of them nonbinary. “We wanted to approach casting the series from multiple angles in order to represent the wide range of queer of New Yorkers,” Armendariz and Reagan explain in a joint statement to them. “We wanted a mix of hilarious, sweet, emotional and serious stories. We were looking to primarily feature people of color, and tried to focus on a different neighborhood in each episode.”
The creators also wanted to ensure that anyone could easily watch the documentary series. So they decided to conceive Folx as a 10-part series that lives only on Instagram. “We noticed how Humans of New York was able to cover non-traditional subjects and highlight them without red tape,” Armendariz and Reagan added. “As we started to develop the idea, Krystalline had the idea that social media had the potential to reach more people, faster, than if we pitched the series through traditional outlets. We wanted to publish directly to our community, with no gatekeepers.”
