SO PRETTY

SO PRETTY (2020). 83 mins, Directed by Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli. $10. for a three-day window to view.

WATCH: https://sentientcinema.vhx.tv/checkout/so-pretty-epsilon-spires/purchase

A transgender visual artist, Tonia comes to NYC, where she meets her American boyfriend, the academic Franz, and begins to work on an new exhibition of a work built around the legacy of German author Ronald M. Schernikau, a gay communist who became the last person to emigrate from West Germany to East Germany. Tonia and Franz talk politics, art, make love, go dancing, drink coffee, protest, and organize alongside their friends, the couple Paul and Erika, a transwoman and musician, and Helmut, a transmaculine political radical. When Paul becomes injured by the police following a political action, their social space is momentarily shattered and both their lives and the film begin to morph into a version of so schön (So Pretty) an untranslated novel by Schernikau about romantic entanglements, clashes with the police, and the hard day-to-day work of political organizing. TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/350369453

An exploration of leftist politics and femme identity in the context of an increasingly right wing world, So Pretty moves freely between fictional depictions and semi-documentary, adaptation and translation, looking towards the artistic and personal worlds its characters generate across time and culture as a space for new tensions and potentials.

"Inventing the queer gaze in front of our eyes.”— IndieWire

“Tender and dreamlike images … in which [Rovinelli] goes exploring and asks us with great warmth to follow her. So Pretty is an appeal to overcoming divisions and a call for us to build new communities and alliances.”— Manuel Schubert, TAZ