Tucked in a corner of the Catskills, Casa Susanna was a modest private resort where cross-dressed transgender men and women gathered on summer weekends during the 1950s and 1960s to live their true self, dressed in everyday ladies’ fashion. and engaging in bourgeois social activities such as taking pictures.
Over the past 15 years, a handful of articles, academic papers, and photographic exhibits (and let’s not forget the 2014 Tony-nominated Harvey Fierstein play) has gradually opened the door to this secret Cold War subculture in America.
Now “Casa Susanna,” a new documentary by French director Sebastien Lifshitz (“Wild Side,” “Little Girl”), is opening it up.
After a well-received world premiere in Venice and screenings this week in Toronto, this fall Casa arrives at the BFI London Film Festival and selects US and international festivals. PBS International, which has global rights and garners a lot of attention, is planning an awards campaign for this year.
The stories of Casa Susanna, its host, and organizers remained largely unknown until collectors Michael Hearst and Robert Swope stumbled upon a bunch of shots at a New York flea market and subsequently published a book of photography in 2005.
Fascinated by the book upon its release, Lifshitz was obsessed with photography as a teenager and began researching “gay and transgender antiquities,” amassing his own large collection over the course of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, while preparing for an exhibition of his collection, he met Isabelle Bonnet, a French art historian who wrote a master’s thesis on transgender people at Casa Susanna. “Isabelle did a very deep investigation — she found Susanna’s real name, she found the location of the house, she found relatives and started reconstructing the story,” Lifshitz told Variety.
“I knew right away that this was an unusual story in pre-queer history. Her research was really important to connect everything, but not enough to make a movie.”
While it took some time for the deal to come together, Agat Films, ARTE France and American Experience Films, in conjunction with BBC Storyville, supported the project – enough to continue moving forward, without having to hustle the documentary markets.
“I think we wanted to protect the film in some way,” said Lifshitz, who traveled to the United States to see the sites and all the archives. He was also looking for former visitors Kate and Diana, both of whom were in their 80s at the time of filming, and the film’s main storytellers. “I was worried that maybe they would be too shy, because you need to put yourself in a position where you can build a story out of your life.”
Famous American photographer Cindy Sherman also had a set of Casa Susanna shots, discovered by Lifshitz, which she agreed to share with the film.
The production also struck an exclusive deal with the Toronto Art Gallery of Ontario, which features 340 images from the aforementioned Casa Susanna amateur photo collection.
Archival material, never-before-seen photos and films of descendants of Casa visitors are perhaps the most revealing; A few of them appear in the film, and their childhood memories provide a unique perspective.
“For me, the found photos and amateur footage are an important connection to the real history,” Lifshitz said. “To say how it really was for a while, you need an anonymous person, and you need the general public.
“It’s a way of understanding social and cultural history in a more subtle and complex way than we usually see.”
[ad_2]
