autobiography

Professor’s THE SKIN I’M IN Probes Alcoholism, Identity

Thanks to The Occidental Weekly and staff writer Sarah Corsa for this thoughtful article on THE SKIN I’M IN and the boundaries of the professor’s body.

Students are generally unaware of their professors’ personal lives. The life experiences that inform their teaching and perspectives stay hidden so that students only see the effects on their syllabi. Occasionally, professors share opinions share campus issues or current events, but students still rarely see the events that shaped these ideas – unless they make an autobiographical documentary, of course. Read full article

Anthem Magazine Interview with THE SKIN I’M IN Director Broderick Fox

Thanks to Anthem Magazine and writer Kee Chang for this great interview leading up to the Oct. 1, 2013 International Digital Release of THE SKIN I’M IN on iTunes and Amazon.

In 2005, at the age of 31, Broderick Fox was found unconscious on the tracks of a Berlin subway station with his head split open and a lethal blood alcohol level of 0.47. As it turns out, Fox had destroyed an entire bottle of vodka and later proceeded to fall onto the tracks—a walking blackout. The Skin I’m In concerns a human work-in-progress chronicling decades of bodily shame, addiction and suppressed sexual identity, which led to what Fox refers to as “the bottom”. Read full article

“This is a home movie. Or rather, a search-for-home movie.”

In many ways, a sense of community is about finding a sense of home. Here is a link to a video of mine called HOME from 2009. It’s comprised of home movie footage in a mix of amateur formats (super 8 film, Hi-8 video, and mini DV) that I shot as I travelled between Berlin and Los Angeles with my first boyfriend between 1996 and 2005. He was German, and the opportunity to explore my identity in Berlin was something I’ll always be grateful for. Years later in 2008, with all the Prop 8 controversy aflame in California, I felt such a sense of deja vu. I pulled out this old footage and found the Prop 22 footage from 2000 now included in Home. I remember at the time, the passage of Prop 22 felt like such a blow to the possibility of my boyfriend (in America on a student visa) and I ever being able to set up a home in the United States.