Chase Joynt: Working at the Edge of Genre

Join filmmaker and writer Chase Joynt, in conversation with the School of Creative Writing’s Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, for a film screening and discussion of his work. The event will begin with a 4 pm screening of Framing Agnes, which received multiple awards and was hailed by Buzzfeed as “a brilliant and enlivening investigation into the role of trans history and the limits of visibility.” After the screening, beginning at 5:30, Joynt and Marzano-Lesnevich will discuss genre as a strategy for interrogating absences and erasures; making art into archival gaps; and other questions at the intersection of art, memory, and history. Joynt’s latest book, Vantage Points, was recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction and was described in prize jury citation as “a disorienting and disruptive mosaic, a powerfully challenging work that stays with the reader long after.” An audience Q&A and reception will follow, concluding by 7. All portions are open to the public.

This is the inaugural event of the Green College Leading Scholars "Truth & Imagination" series and it is co-sponsored by Green College, the School of Creative Writing, and DocUBC.

Chase Joynt is a non-fiction filmmaker and writer. His documentary feature, Framing Agnes, was named a Best Movie of the Year by The New Yorker after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award. With Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase co-directed No Ordinary Man, which has been hailed by The New Yorker as “a genre unto itself” and Indiewire as “the future of trans cinema.” The film has won nine awards on the international festival circuit, including being named to TIFF Canada’s Top Ten. His latest book Vantage Points was published in September 2024 and is shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction.