‘Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later’ Review: Catching Up With the Subjects of a Queer Classic
17.11.2023 - 01:05
/ variety.com
Lisa Kennedy In the early 2000s, director Daniel Peddle turned his gaze to the lives of several young, masculine-presenting lesbians of color living in New York City. He called his documentary “The Aggressives,” in a nod to the label given to, but also embraced by, the women featured. The film was groundbreaking then and remains illuminating today.
For his sequel, “Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later,” Peddle has gathered four of the subjects who made the 2005 film both insightful and inspiring. The original was filmed between 1997 and 2003. The sequel covers the years 2018-23, with Peddle and editor Yvette Wojciechowski deftly interspersing footage from the original documentary throughout.
It’s good to see Kisha Batista, Trevon Haynes, Octavio Sanders and Chin Tsui again. In the original, they were teenagers wrestling with identity amid issues of race, class, sexuality and, it turns out, gender. Beneath their swagger coursed questions about belonging, labels and identity.
In “Beyond,” those quandaries have been, if not always resolved, engaged. They’ve evolved. What must it feel like to have been a character in such a time capsule? And then return for more? In the original doc, nearly all the subjects stated that their masculine presentation should not be confused with wanting to be a man.
In the interim — years in which transgender identity has made advances — Trevon, Chin and Octavios have transitioned or identify as male. Much as she was in the original, the artist Kisha Batista, who identified then as “fem-aggressive,” is the outlier. She was also the person who introduced Peddle to her circle of aggressive — or AG — friends.