Hurl a Rock, Feel a Flame is an experimental video made in collaboration with members of the queer and trans community in Georgetown, Guyana, based on an invitation from SASOD (Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination), a legal non-profit. SASOD approached the artist to make a film documenting a landmark legal case they shepherded, which overturned a 1893 vagrancy law on “cross-dressing.” SASOD moved the case through multiple levels of court over a nine-year process, culminating in a 2018 historic ruling by the Caribbean Court of Justice in Trinidad that deemed the discriminatory law unconstitutional. Guyana was the first Caribbean nation to create legal protections for trans people.

Through his connection to SASOD, Vishal Jugdeo plans to work with local organizers Candacy McEwan and Angel Clarke. Candacy and Angel were among seven trans women arrested and jailed in Georgetown in 2009, the catalyst for the landmark case. Candacy founded an organization called Guyana Trans United in 2013.  Together, they will organize a series of film/video workshops for the local queer and trans community, inviting participants to contribute to the project. The final outcome will be a collectively authored and attributed video (30-60 minutes) that experiments between fiction and document, and interweaves perspectives of the participants. The video will depict the night of arrests, the legal process, and how people’s lives have been impacted by the case. Jugdeo intends to balance aesthetics and pedagogy, experimentation and accessibility. Jugdeo will also build an online archive so the raw material gathered during the workshops and other materials are available to the community.