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Queer East Film Festival London Screens Work by Azian Nurudin

Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times (1986-1999)

Azian Nurudin is someone I worked with in San Francisco in my grad student days and beyond. Her work was recently celebrated in the Queer East Film Festival 2026 with a screening of videos, some of which I worked on, and all of which I love and am indebted to for their absolute non-apologetic bravery and intelligence. Thanks, Azian!

video still from "Nancy's Nightmare," by Azian Nurudin, 1988.
Video still from “Nancy’s Nightmare,” by Azian Nurudin, 1988

I wrote a brief essay about Azian’s work for the Queer East catalogue, which I have published below:

“I believe Azian Nurudin’s video work from the 1980s and ‘90s provides possible solutions to the global disasters wrought by late-stage patriarchy, such as those we are currently experiencing. Her content shifts the center of the then-current feminist discussions about colonialism, sex, justice, human rights – discussions that radiated ideology – to expressions of refusal and rage. Azian gives us the beauty of the experimental form in pieces such as Sinar Durjana (Wicked Radiance) (1991), and Bitter Strength: Sadistic Response Version (1992). In Malaysian Series 1-6, the performance of rage shifts the central argument vigorously from personal to geo-political, providing a visceral response to colonialism and the patriarchal death-wish.

“Those of us working in video together in San Francisco were creating a cohesive movement of feminist and queer experimental video without quite realizing the singularity of the moment. We shared equipment, cast members, and crew. Leslie Singer had a VHS camcorder that could turn out special effects and generate titles; Azian and I shared a Fisher-Price pixelvision camcorder that we purchased together for about $95. I did camera for Nancy’s Nightmare (1989) and What Do Pop Art, Pop Music, Pornography and Politics Have To Do With Real Life? (1990). And when I was making my own video Grapefruit (1989) about Yoko Ono, Azian agreed to play George Harrison. She insisted, however, on wearing sunglasses in every scene, weaving a new thread of visual humor into the piece.

“Azian’s work is raw as well as sophisticated, immediate as well as reflecting experience and contemplation. Process, community, performance in conjunction, clicking into place.”

Cecilia Dougherty

College of Staten Island CUNY Film Festival 2026

Just a few photos from the May 2026 CSI Film Festival. The festival showed 13 films by students in the Video Editing, Cinematography, Non-Linear, Thesis, and Workshop classes. The work at this year’s festival showed a lot of ingenuity, hard work, thoughtfulness, and some crazy (yet well-produced) fun.

photo of Mitchell Lovell, CSI Film Festival Director at the podium announcing festival proceedings
CSI Film Festival Director Mitchell Lovell
Student winners at the CSI film festival
Festival winners and emerging filmmakers: Mia Sinodinos and Samuel Schell, with Media Culture Dept. faculty Emma Johnson and Film Festival Director Mitchell Lovell, behind the podium
CSI Film Festival 2026 student filmmakers and award winners
Carmine Mazza and Louis Yeomas, CSI Film Festival award winners and emerging filmmakers
Student filmmakers Emm Wilson and Arianna Gaytan
Emerging filmmakers and CSI Film Festival award winners Emm Wilson and Arianna Gaytan
Festival Director Mitchell Lovell with the participating student filmmakers at CSI Film Festival
Festival Director Mitchell Lovell with the participating student filmmakers at CSI Film Festival. Congratulations, everyone!
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May 5, 2026 Cecilia Dougherty at the Parkside Lounge

317 E. Houston St., New York City, Tuesday, May 5, 7:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Poster for a screening of works by Cecilia Dougherty at the Parkside Lounge. Curated by Ann Stephenson, with a Q&A after screening with Cecilia Dougherty and Lia Gangitano

Screening of my Writers Series of intimate video portraits. The works include Joe, 2018, with Joe Westmoreland; Kevin and Cedar, 2002, with Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo; Eileen, 2000, with Eileen Myles; Lesie, 1998, with Leslie Scalapino; and Laurie, 1998, with Laurie Weeks. Total running time is about 45 minutes. I love these writers!

Parkside Link: https://tenteditions.com/Cecilia-dougherty

Joe Westmoreland
Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo
Eileen Myles
Leslie Scalapino
Laurie Weeks

Afterwards, I’m discussing the videos with Lia Gangitano, excellent curator and gallerist at Participant Inc. in NYC, who has been showing my work since 1998, with a several-day screening event at Threadwaxing Space in lower Manhattan.

Lia Gangitano, photo by A. Steiner
Lia Gangitano, photo by A. Steiner

Ann Stephenson, who curates the Readings at Parkside series was generous enough to ask about the Writers Series. This is the first time they will have all been screen together. Thank you, Ann!

The Parkside Lounge is a neighborhood bar with music and events venue in the back room. It has a friendly neighborhood vibe. People of all ages and stripes enjoying a pint, enjoying each other’s company, attending readings by contemporary greats, and now, there’s a video screening! I look forward to seeing you there.

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At the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

February 2026

Cecilia Dougherty holding a replica of the Herto skull at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC
With the Herto skull at the Education Center, Hall of Human Origins. Photo by Jamie Chan.

On weekend visits to the Natural History Museum here in NYC (the AMNH), you can go to a room off to the side of the main exhibit in the Hall of Human Origins and see and touch replicas of the skulls of all types of Hominins (upright-walking apes, like us). I’m holding a replica of the Herto skull from Ethiopia, aged at 160,000+ years. An early Homo sapiens type of person who had brow ridges. Brow ridges were to eventually disappear, but some have a theory that they may be a hold-over from a % of Neanderthal DNA that they, as modern people, carry in there genetic structure. I’m not sure about the Neanderthal origin of brow ridges in H. sapiens, however, since Herto and other early sapiens, such as the skull found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, had brow ridges as well, and being discovered in Africa, where Neanderthals rarely ventured, sapiens brow ridges may indicate a non-Neanderthal origin of brow ridges in people today.

Speaking of which, I was looking for an image of a Homo erectus skullcap and brow ridges online, because I guessed wrong at the model available at the AMNH and realized how little I know about early humans. Here’s the skull I mistakenly thought belonged to a Paranthropus individual:

But obviously, it has a rounded brain case, indicating that it is a Homo specimen. I have a lot of learning to do, but fortunately, all of the learning I have yet to do is fun and interesting.

The image search for the erectus skullcap and brow ridges above, led to a whole other place: plastic surgery and facial reconstruction to remove brow ridges, to smooth them out, in people who would like a smoother and more anatomically modern human brow. Here are some before and after images of people who have had surgery done. I always prefer the “before,” since the “Neanderthal” or archaic part of us is appealing, attractive, and interesting:

Before- and after- images of someone who has had brow-ridge surgery
Brow ridges, before and after surgery
Before- and after- images of someone who has had brow-ridge surgery
Before and after brow ridge surgery
Before- and after- images of someone who has had brow-ridge surgery
Before- and after- images of someone who has had brow-ridge surgery

So, yes, there’s always something surprising going on that gives the tug of war between our Neanderthal and Homo sapiens genes momentum. As stated above, I prefer the brow ridges to the smooth and egg-shaped new facial construction.

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Cedar Sigo reads from Siren of Atlantis at the Parkside Lounge, NYC

Cedar Sigo at the Parkside Lounge, Reading on April 27, 2025 part of Ann Stephenson’s reading series, Readings at Parkside hosts West Coast poet Cedar Sigo

book cover, Siren of Atlantis, poems by Cedar Sigo, published 2025 by Wave Press
Siren of Atlantis, poems by Cedar Sigo, published 2025 by Wave Press

Last night at the Parkside Lounge on Houston Street in New York, West Coast poet Cedar Sigo gave a moving and beautiful reading of poems from his new book, Siren of Atlantis, published by Wave Books, Seattle. I haven’t seen Cedar since 2002, when he and Kevin Killian and I did a video shoot for my writer’s series and created the short video, Kevin and Cedar.

[my video page is here]

Cedar Sigo and Cecilia Dougherty at Cedar's reading from his new book, Sirens of Atlantis at Parkside Lounge in NYC
Cedar Sigo and Cecilia Dougherty at Cedar’s reading from his new book, Siren of Atlantis,
at Parkside Lounge in NYC

Cedar looks amazing, as you can plainly see. Siren of Atlantis is a book he wrote in part as a walking back into writing, “keeping a hand in,” after having experienced a stroke in 2022. A truly remarkable achievement. Yes. Energy, motivation, love, excitement. All are a part of this book, and of course, its author.

Ann Stephenson introduces Cedar Sigo, who is going to be reading from his new book, Siren of Atlantis. Parkside Lounge, NYC.
Ann Stephenson introduces Cedar Sigo, who is going to be reading from his new book,
Siren of Atlantis. Parkside Lounge, NYC.

I went to the reading alone and ran into the artist Elise Gardella, who lives nearby and who had not yet met Cedar. Eileen Myles was there and I spied Justin Vivian Bond at a table across the room. Enough gossip! Cedar Sigo is an accomplished poet, treadding carefully yet delightfully and appreciatively through the language. After the reading, Ann and Cedar talked about his life and his work.

After the reading, Ann and Cedar had a conversation about Cedar’s work, the efforts and joys of writing, and the uses and meaning of reading and writing poetry at this time of political oppression.

Cedar Sigo & Anne Stephenson at Parkside Lounge, NYC, having a discussion and Q&A after Cedar's reading.
Cedar Sigo & Anne Stephenson at Parkside Lounge, NYC, having a discussion and Q&A
after Cedar’s reading.

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“No More Sweets For You” at Light Industry

Curated by Elisabeth Subrin

Tuesday, April 15, 2025 at 7pmLight Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn

German Song, Sadie Benning, 1995, digital projection, 6 mins
An Epic: Falling Between the Cracks, Nancy Andrews, 1995, digital projection, 6 minsTrue Confessions of an Artist, Kirsten Stoltmann, 1994, digital projection, 5 mins 
The Fight, Jeanine Oleson, 1995, digital projection, 3 mins
Sapphire and the Slave Girl, L. Franklin Gilliam, 1995, digital projection, 17 mins
I, Bear, Hendl Helen Mirra, 1995, digital projection, 6 mins
Dear Mom, Tammy Rae Carland, 1995, digital projection, 3 mins
aletheia, Tran T. Kim-Trang, 1992, digital projection, 16 mins
Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron), Cauleen Smith, 1992, 16mm, 6 mins
The Girl’s Nervy, Jennifer Reeves, 1995, 16mm, 5 mins
My Failure to Assimilate, Cecilia Dougherty, 1995, digital projection, 20 mins

Presented with Video Data Bank

Video still, My Failure to Assimilate
Video still from My Failure to Assimilate, by Cecilia Dougherty, 1995

The program:
In 1995, after the rise of Third Wave feminism but before the social and political realignments of the internet, artistElisabeth Subrin organized a screening of films and videos entitled No More Sweets For You. The program firstshowed at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago, then toured to Hallwalls in Buffalo and the MIX festival in NewYork City. Though each lineup differed, many of the core offerings were by American women who, like Subrinherself, were under 30. Seen today, it reveals a rich (and still, in many ways, underappreciated) vein of feministexperimental cinema at the end of the 20th century.

The works concern thwarted connections and, as Subrin put it at the time, “the fantasies, trauma andschizophrenia of solo-ness,” but the program also suggests an intensely collaborative milieu. Its artists wereassociated in numerous ways—as colleagues or lovers or friends—and traces of these relationships can be seenin the credits: Tammy Rae Carland appears as an interviewee in Cecilia Dougherty’s video, Subrin and KirstenStoltmann worked on Franklin Gilliam’s tape; and in turn Gilliam, Stoltmann, and Sadie Benning were involvedwith the production of Subrin’s own Swallow, completed that same year and featured in the original program. 

Unlike boomer feminist celebrations of community and sisterhood, the screening is haunted by the specter offailure and figures of isolation. Consider the wandering latchkey kid of Benning’s German Song, the Nauman-eque artiste depicted in Kirsten Stoltmann’s Confessions, or the mop-haired child subject of Hendl Helen Mirra’s I,Bear. Nowhere are film or video employed as simple tools of communication; both celluloid and electronic imagesare likewise approached as malleable, tactile forms, made visually complex through multiple layers ofremediation: documents collaged and animated, videos re-taped off monitors, images scratched, frozen, andpainted-over. The viewer can sense lone psyches wrestling with the crises of their day, in the cellular isolation of alate-night editing suite. Identities are metabolized by, and drift between, a range of audiovisual formats andprocesses, including Super-8, manually-edited 16mm, analog video, Pixelvision, and digital effects.

With a typically Gen-X dialectical ambivalence, these artists collectively argue that isolation can simultaneouslyfoster both mental destabilization and social resistance. “In an era of corporate grunge, queer commodification,empowerment politics and right-wing cyborgs,” Subrin asks in her original program notes, “how do theunassimilated survive without being smashed, named or forced to participate?” The answer provided by No MoreSweets for You: it’s personal, it’s deep, and it’s complicated. 

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Queerness! Portraits of…

Portraits of Queerness Film Series at the College of Staten Island

Friday, March 28, 2025, 2:30 – 9:00 PM
Center for Performing & Creative Arts, Building 1P

Screening that day of my 2002 video portrait of Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo, titled
Kevin and Cedar.

video still from my 2002 video titled Kevin and Cedar
video still, Kevin & Cedar, 2002

But my film only ran for half of it! There was an error with the projection. I created a teaching moment, however, and showed Kevin and Cedar to my Cinematography class with a description of how the piece came about. I was in San Francisco and had arranged to shoot a portrait of him, as one of my series of writers’ portraits that I had been doing, so far with Laurie Weeks, Leslie Scalapino, and Eileen Myles. When I got to Kevin and Dodie Bellamy‘s apartment, Cedar was there, having just then arrived in San Francisco from Washington State. We decided to have the portrait be a double-portrait with Kevin and Cedar together. Here’s a link to the other videos in my writers’ series > https://vimeo.com/channels/ceciliadougherty.

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ICE allowed in schools, churches, hospitals

In case you didn’t know, the pit of depravity that is our current government is bottomless.

I found this website that allows you to print one of the Red Cards, which gives basic information about what to do if ICE arrives on any of your doorsteps. Think it’s unlikely? Maybe, but maybe not, especially if you are a teacher.

Here’s a link to the site where you can download and print your own RED CARD. These are free and will always be free. There’s already loathsome scammers who are selling RED CARDS. The cards are free! Here > https://www.ilrc.org/red-cards-tarjetas-rojas

Image of Red Card from the Immigration Legal Resources Center
Visit the site linked to download red card image and text. Keep it with you!