BLACK IS BLUE

Against the dystopian backdrop of another Bay Area tech boom gone bust, this is an erotic tale of a black trans couple brought together by technology. Their tragic love story is witnessed by a bot who stands by — eager to learn and protect— until it is transformed by them. It’s a story built from the harsh realities of trans-of-color life in America and my award-winning 2014 short film. While incorporating Dunyementary-style interviews, BLACK IS BLUE also takes the cadence of a speculative thriller—a touch of Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD, a swish of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein—and melds it with the architecture of tech advances in the development of AI companions. All of this is held together by the emotional urgency of trans romance, the kind between characters we’ve never seen at the helm of a feature film. Epic in presentation, taut and tense in character and story, BLACK IS BLUE incorporates real and fictional accounts from the lives of transmen and women of color from around the globe and the ongoing public policy fight around identity, gender, and technology.

The main characters represent the working class, the underground, and the defiant, who seek to challenge and overthrow the ruling elite, whose rule continues to cause a growing divide between the rich and the poor. A battle is always on the horizon, and the principal characters are fully aware of their place in it, though not always of the outcome. This is never a straightforward tale of oppressors versus the oppressed as betrayal is always lurking around the corner. Where are the genuine connections that define us as humans? Who or what can we trust in this ever-changing reality? The underlying mood of BLACK IS BLUE is one of impending danger as a necessary force for change. That change explores corporate agendas around advancing artificial intelligence technology and how those profit-driven schemes exploit those on the margins. A useful comp in this regard is Alex Garland’s 2014 film, EX MACHINA, which, like our film, also examines the humanity of humanoid creations. If EX MACHINA is a film that challenges how the male and female identities are constructed by male-dominated society as much as by biology, then visually and thematically, BLACK IS BLUE similarly challenges how artificial intelligence characters in films have historically left out trans humanoids and/or humanoids of Color.

This film also centers on a love story of two unlikely characters drawn together to fight the corporate tech boom and greed. It is similar to Drake Doremus’ ZOE, where forbidden lovers bond together to create the perfect computer program for the sake of love and, quite possibly, humanity. The main characters’ inner worlds will be depicted in a way where their realities and fantasies converge, consistently calling into question what is real and what is not as the need for artificial technology continues to be debated.