Dating Sucks: Love: Grace Film Festival: Official Selection

Dating Sucks: A Gender Queer Misadventure
US
Buy Tickets
Runtime:
Category: Love
Screening Date: January 31, 2015


An animated documentary web-series about the successes, failures, and incredible confusion trying to date as a genderqueer/trans person.

Director: Sam Berliner
(from Curve Magazine)
Sam, who identifies as queer, trans and genderqueer, is a 31 year old East-Coast transplant living in the Bay Area. He got his MFA in Cinema last May 2013 from San Francisco State University and this series was born from his thesis film for school. He is also the Festival Director for Translations: the Seattle Transgender Film Festival.Right as he was finishing the film, Sam met his current boyfriend. Still, he says, “It was important for me to tell this story because I felt completely alone and isolated in my confusion about dating.”

DATING SUCKS: A GENDERQUEER MISADVENTURE is Sam’s astutely observed, sweetly narrated autobiographical story combining narration, animation, and live action filmmaking. It’s immediately compelling and amusing, and humanizes the vulnerability of the dating experience. In it we observe Sam coming to terms with his gender identity and sexual orientation,root for him as he sets out on a journey of self-discovery, and cheer him on as he learns about pomosexuality, explores the concept of “friends with benefits,” and tries on-line dating.

Sam states that his goal as a filmmaker is “to provide a positive voice for the trans, genderqueer, androgynous and gender-fluid folks not yet represented on screen, documenting our history, serving as a call to action to be recognized and respected by society at large, and forcing our culture to evolve. DATING SUCKS, while focusing on a sub-sub culture, is universally relatable because at its heart it is a search for love and oneself. By recognizing our similarities, my hope is that all people can find common ground for acceptance and understanding.”