Dani Wilder 2026

Abstract

I am so inspired by the repression of American cinema, especially when it comes to the body. There is an almost universal electric charge, an odd taboo, a shifting in one’s seat phenomenon towards the presentation of the human body on screen. That almost instinctual response I believe especially extends to trans women in film, clothed or not. This isn’t to say that trans women provoke an inherently sexual feeling, although oftentimes that can certainly be the case. It is more that, implicitly, it is breaking the rules of traditional filmmaking to even see a trans person in a movie. Usually, this is a feeling that the filmmaker ignores or pushes through or feeds into a larger moralization about trans identity present in the story, but I so wish to burrow into that feeling itself. There is an untapped potential in the trans body onscreen, something that can be presented without comment or context and still create some sort of reaction in an audience. Despite a growing “normalization” (in huge scare-quotes) of trans people in pop culture, popular cinematic narratives around transness are often focused on the same rote themes; whether that be dysphoria, the beginning stages of transition, violence towards trans people, or the physical components of the transition process. While these are all meaningful subjects to portray, they are often limited to a hyperliteral objectivity and don’t delve fully into a trans subjectivity. I crave work that is enveloped in the unique emotional circumstances of the trans experience. I think for a cinematic empathy towards trans people to be established, there must be space afforded for not just trans prose but trans poetics in the prevailing cinematic language. My thesis consists of two films that work under the pretense of this premise. "Gloriohio" is a colorful, low-budget feature film that uses the genre of the vampire film and the romantic comedy to get at unarticulated feelings of loneliness and alienation experienced by transgender women in the United States. "Spirit 3," on the other hand, explores similar themes through a no-budget, quasi-autobiographical setup. In presenting two works that vary significantly on the surface level (one colorful, polished, and structurally predictable, the other black & white, lo-fi, and meandering), I hope to bring out their shared interest in looking towards the future of trans representation in film, whether that be narrative, experimental, or otherwise.