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Doors 6pm, screening 6:30pm, followed by discussion

Matthew Lax, Gay Men’s Book Club, 2025. Single-channel video (still). 51 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Join us for the US premiere of Matthew Lax’s Gay Men’s Book Club, an experimental documentary featuring seven diverse gay men in LA discussing Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture around a table in September 2023. The unscripted, intergenerational discussion is facilitated by the filmmaker in collaboration with community organizer, founding member of the Radical Faeries, and Jungian psychologist Dr. Don Kilhefner. The participants explore Táíwò’s concept of elite capture as it relates to community, privilege, organizing, and their own group dynamics.

The screening will be followed by a conversation between Lax and writer Sarah Schulman on the film and the co-optation of identity politics via queer organizing histories.

This program is part of our ongoing Sight/Geist series in support of local emerging film and performance artists, organized by Charles de Agustin. All of our events are free and open to the public with RSVPs encouraged. Info on accessing our space can be found here. Email us with any questions.

Bios

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her 21 books include The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, NY 1987-1993, and the novels Maggie Terry and The Cosmopolitans. Sarah holds an endowed chair in Creative Writing at Northwestern University and sits on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Matthew Lax is a filmmaker, artist, and writer interested in the psychic, social, and economic realities of collective identity. Lax's films, installations and organizational projects are often made in collaboration with animals, non-actors, and the “everyday ensembles” found within families, lovers, hobby clubs, athletic teams, and kink communities. Lax’s screenings and exhibitions include Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), Rencontres Internationales (Paris), MIX New York and MIX Brasil (São Paulo), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Human Resources Los Angeles, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), REDCAT, and Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, among others. In 2025 he was the subject of a survey presentation at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Image description: Seven diverse men sit around a table in a small bookshop, engaged in a conversation.