“I think that we are in a moment where I feel tired of documentaries that are organized around solo authorities or hero’s journeys or protagonists of a very particular kind,” said Joynt.
As in previous documentaries he’s helmed, Joynt incorporates discussions with the film’s cast (who the Agnes press materials might actually be underselling by calling them merely “an impressive lineup of trans stars”) into the fabric of the documentary itself. The line between the fantasy of the 1950’s talk show and these backstage chats between actor and director are further blurred when the black-and-white of the talk show set cuts to color, as happens throughout the doc, so Joynt — who, in addition to directing, plays the talk show host — can ask a script question of off-camera Page, or pause to discuss a line delivery with the actor sitting across from him.
While watching these pivots from straight-faced black and white talk show pastiche to full-color on-set line adjustments to backstage discussions to Gill-Peterson in a white-walled studio, remarkably, the narrative thread is never lost. Rather, the viewer is forced to shift their perspective along with the film. How can we distance ourselves from Garfinkel and his intrusive, sometimes insulting queries when just a minute ago he was the affable, smiling Joynt, exchanging character insights with fellow actor Jen Richards? While watching handheld, technicolor B-roll of Zackary Drucker’s Agnes smiling up at the lens, doesn’t that make us the one holding the camera, the recipient of that intimate look?
“There are all these ways that I’m hoping to think about trans representation while also undercutting it at the same time,” said Joynt of the documentary’s fourth wall-obliterating structure, “And so some of the ways that we’re trying to do that is to constantly shift the authority of who’s controlling the behind the scenes, which of course does not exist in the framework of the film itself.”
It feels significant that a documentary by and about trans people, let alone one grappling with the question of who gets to tell trans stories — and which stories, and how — has just premiered at Sundance. But to celebrate that in and of itself would be to simplify the narrative in the exact way that Framing Agnes challenges us to eschew. “The only way we were able to get there and deliver that and bring [Framing Agnes] to Sundance was to do it together,” said Gill-Peterson. “None of us could have pulled that off on our own because there’s so many institutional barriers in our way.”
With the ominous Zoom timer ticking down its final minutes, she added: “We’re done spoon-feeding trans representation, trans politics, trans culture, trans history to people, including queer and trans people. I’m really tired of how condescending a lot of mainstream cultural tastemakers have been about, ‘Rah-rah, it’s June. Here’s a really canned story about Sylvia Rivera.’ No, we’re over that.”
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