Followed by a conversation between Frédéric Moffet and the artist, curator, and scholar John Neff.
Thursday, September 11, 6:00 p.m. | For over three decades, artist and filmmaker Frédéric Moffet has cultivated a practice rooted in queer relationality—drawing inspiration from early gay liberation and thinkers like Michel Foucault, who imagined queerness as a way of being that fosters new forms of intimacy, community, and care. Moffet’s films grow out of his own networks of relation—pedagogical, intellectual, erotic—and are attuned to ephemerality and loss, recovering fugitive traces from cruising grounds, private archives, and history’s margins. In this program, titled after a lyric by Billie Holiday, he presents three recent films—The Magic Hedge (2016), Goddess of Speed (2023), and The Job (2024)—alongside works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross, conjuring themes of beauty, impermanence, desire, and memory.
Presented in partnership with SAIC Galleries’ Faculty Sabbatical Triennial, on view August 25– December 6. Moffet and Amina Ross’s works are also included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition, The Garden in a City: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago, on view through May 31, 2026.
PROGRAM
The Magic Hedge
Frédéric Moffet, 2016, 6 minutes, In Spanish and English with English subtitles
Set in a bird sanctuary on Chicago’s North Side—once a Cold War missile site—The Magic Hedge reveals the park’s hidden life as a site of queer cruising. Wandering through trees and shrubberies, the viewer encounters a space shaped by danger, respite, surveillance, and desire.
La Jungle (Spoils of the Park) work-in-progress
Jamie Ross, 2025, 11 minutes, In English and French with English subtitles
Work-in-progress excerpts from Jamie Ross's upcoming feature. A glimpse into the cruising subculture of Montreal’s Mount Royal Park, where moments of connection unfold under the shadow of persistent police violence.
Sight Leak
Zuqiang Peng, 2022, 12 minutes, In Mandarin with English subtitles
Loosely inspired by a text by Roland Barthes, Sight Leak takes the perspective of a flâneur trailing a man through bars, streets, the cinema, and a mall. Their relationship remains undefined—stalker, friend, or something in between—casting desire and surveillance in an ambiguous light.
The Job
Frédéric Moffet, 2024, 15 minutes
This intimate portrait explores the erotic archive of Canadian photographer John Phillips, who worked in the 1990s for gay male magazines in the US. Tracing the impact of the AIDS crisis and the rise of the digital era, the film reflects on an artist—and an industry—at the threshold of cultural and technological transformation.
Man’s Country
Amina Ross, 2021, 8 minutes
Using publicly sourced images, Ross digitally reconstructs the now-demolished interior of Chicago’s longest-running gay bathhouse, inserting themself into a space they could previously not enter. The result is a meditation on memory, desire, and the longing for sites of queer intimacy, connection, and transformation.
Goddess of Speed
Frédéric Moffet, 2023, 9 minutes
A speculative reimagining of Warhol’s lost Dance Movie, Goddess of Speed casts artist Stevie Cisneros Hanley as queer dancer Fred Herko in the final days of his life. The film draws on fragmented descriptions and the memoir of Herko’s close friend, poet Diane Di Prima.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Frédéric Moffet is a French-Canadian filmmaker, artist, and educator whose award-winning work blends formal experimentation with cultural inquiry to explore queer desire, identity, and history. His films have been exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement / Biennial of Moving Images (Geneva). He has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and earned awards from the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Santiago International Short Film Festival, and FLEX—the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival (Gainesville), among others. Moffet is currently professor and chair of the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
ACCESSIBILITY
CATE events include real-time captions (CART). The Film Center is ADA accessible and equipped with hearing loops; for additional requests, visit saic.edu/access or contact cate@saic.edu.
TICKETS
$13 General public
$8 Students & seniors
$6.50 Film Center members
$5 SAIC staff & faculty & AIC staff
FREE for SAIC students with a valid ID
All CATE programs are free for SAIC students. Unless otherwise noted, SAIC student tickets are released five days before showtime. Student tickets must be picked up in person from the Siskel Film Center box office. A student ID is required.
CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE
Conversations at the Edge is the Siskel Film Center’s award-winning series for innovative film and media art. From eye-opening screenings to unforgettable performances and talks, CATE is made possible through a unique partnership between the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, Video Data Bank, and the Siskel Film Center.