An Ashkenazi Jewish trans-masculine person is looking into the camera. He has a salt and pepper beard, yellow rimmed glass, and wears a mottled pink shirt. In the background is a lush out-of-focus forest.

Jules Rosskam

Philadelphia, PA

Jules Rosskam is a filmmaker, educator, and interdisciplinary artist interested in liminal spaces—the space between male and female, documentary and fiction, moving image and still photography. His interdisciplinary practice works to induce a perceptual shift in our understanding of how and what bodies mean, toward an apprehension of multiplicities. He is the director of transparent, against a trans narrative, Thick Relations, Something to Cry About, Paternal Rites, and Dance, Dance, Evolution. Recent screenings include the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, and the Queens Museum of Art. Residencies include Yaddo, Marble House Project, PLAYA, ACRE, and ISSUE Project Room. Rosskam holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at University of Maryland Baltimore County.


Desire Lines


Jules Rosskam is a filmmaker, educator, and interdisciplinary artist interested in liminal spaces—the space between male and female, documentary and fiction, moving image and still photography.

Artist Bio

It’s an open secret among transgender men: after coming out as trans, many develop an attraction for other men. Desire Lines is a feature-length essay film that issues a radical reframing of transmasculine sexuality. Situated at the intersection of sex, gender, and desire, the film uses of one-on-one interviews, erotic encounters, observational footage, performed scenarios, and historical fiction about gay bathhouses. Desire Lines reveals as much about why sexual desires might change as gender presentation changes as it does about masculinity in our culture, emphasizing gender as a prism through which all other aspects of the self—such as race, class, and nationhood—are refracted. Drawing connections between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics, the film also seeks to illuminate the biopolitics of government indifference.

Desire Lines premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2024 on January 22, 2024. Desire Lines received the NEXT Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival 2024.


Award Year
2021
Status

Completed