Happening Tuesday (Oct 28): join me live for a queer short film workshop (free!)
This Tuesday, October 28, I'm hosting The Short Take — a free, one-time-only live workshop for film lovers who want to watch and think together. We'll watch an award-winning 22-minute short from 2017 that looks at queer history — and who gets to tell it. It's a film I haven't stopped thinking about in the last 8 years. Then, we'll rewatch key scenes and unpack how the film's form (e.g. blocking, shot choice, editing, production design, and more) shapes what it makes us feel. 🗓️ When: Tuesday, Oct 29 → 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT / 7 PM Europe 💡 More info on The Short Take 🎟️ Register free (no replay)
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184. What Happens When You Apply 'Yes, And' to Film Discussions
What if the most powerful insights about a film don't come from watching it alone — but from talking it through with curious people who notice what you missed, and help you turn half-formed thoughts into something deeper? In this episode, I share why I built The Long Take — A space for deep, layered, perspective-shifting conversations about film — and how a spirit of collaboration, attention, and trust can transform how we see movies…and ourselves We kick off Nov 2 with a zero-prep welcome session. 👉 Save your seat
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183. The Choral (TIFF 2025) with Ralph Fiennes: When queer characters don't make a queer film
How can a film with a queer protagonist, written by a queer playwright, and directed by a queer man… not be a queer film? That's the tricky question I'm tackling with The Choral, the WWI period drama that just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In this episode: my Ralph Fiennes/Nicholas Hytner fangirling, why the film works as a crowd-pleaser but flattens queerness and other marginalized identities, and the bigger questions it raises about reclaiming — or sanitizing — queer history. 🎟 Plus, a sneak peek at Living Out Loud, my FREE three-day summit on queer and trans storytelling happening Oct 3–5. 👉 Sign up for Living Out Loud
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182. Couture (with Angelina Jolie) and Alice Winocour's traumatized bodies (TIFF 2025)
Alice Winocour's Couture is a backstage film about the fashion world — less about the clothes than the bodies who wear them, shape them, and photograph them. It's a film about the ways that commerce and fashion (and medicine) shape and damage women's bodies. As a Winocour fan and researcher since 2015, Alex Heeney connects Couture to Winocour's explorations of traumatized bodies, outsiders, and backstage stories throughout her body of work. 🎟 If you want to explore a film together in conversation — not just listen in — join me for Living Out Loud, my free Queer and Trans Storytelling Summit happening the first weekend of October. On Day 3, I'll be hosting a short film screening and live group discussion — and you're invited. 👉 Save your seat here.
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181. Between Dreams and Hope and queer survival (TIFF 2025)
At TIFF, Alex dives into Iranian filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi's Between Dreams and Hope, a powerful film about a trans man in Iran navigating the dehumanizing maze of gender-affirming care — and connects it to two others, from Canada and France, that reveal how patriarchy, money, and bureaucracy shape queer and trans survival. These aren't straight reviews so much as reflections on how films spark curiosity, uncover hidden systems, and resist erasure. ✨ Don't miss it! This October, join me for Living Out Loud — a FREE three-day live online summit all about queer and trans stories and queer and trans history. Sign up here
A weekly film podcast that helps you have a more rewarding experience watching movies by connecting you to the best under-the-radar films from around the world so that you don't have to watch all the movies to watch good movies that expand your cinematic horizons — both in content and form.
This is a podcast about those films, the joys and challenges of finding and watching those films, how filmmaking choices affect our experience of them, and the people and places we discover through looking outside the mainstream and beyond the English language.
Our mission is to upend the canon to be more inclusive by spotlighting and diving deep into international and independent films by and about women, Indigenous People, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups. Find multiple episodes on the films of Kelly Reichardt, Céline Sciamma, Andrew Haigh, and Joachim Trier.
Become a member to access the full (200+ episode) podcast archive and get early access to new episodes: http://seventh-row.com/join
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