Almost everyone has some sort of COVID-19 memory or story. While it’s not a time in recent history that many want to revisit, it remains tied to our ongoing experiences. Films and books set during the pandemic are beginning to emerge, and yet the subject matter can be a hard sell for an audience. Director G Chesler feels COVID is still part of our ongoing lives and decided to pursue questions about trans health and the pandemic in the documentary Connection / Isolation.
The 2024 film first came to my attention at the 9th edition of the Divine Queer Film Festival in Torino during the spring of 2025. In addition to confronting COVID’s impact on larger society, Connection / Isolation discusses it from the perspective of eight trans and nonbinary people. Each perspective is detailed and sensitive, allowing the viewer to understand the complexity of different realities, even if the experiences may not be familiar.
G Chesler, the director/producer of Connection / Isolation, is also a professor of Film and Video Studies at George Mason, who believes, “As an educator for 23 years, I’ve been a professor and I am a lifelong student. One of the best ways to really understand something is to teach it.” Chesler’s level of commitment to research and learning comes through in the documentary’s careful presentation of the various interviewees. One senses an ease that each participant has on camera as they tell their stories and describe their dedication to their art or activism.
G Chesler presented the film to an appreciative audience in Torino and received the grand prize at the festival. We hung out a little at the venue, an inclusive event held in a culturally mixed working-class neighborhood away from the busy city center. Chesler was enamored with the welcome Torino gave. “Feels like Portland (Oregon)!” Chesler noted enthusiastically. A couple of months later, we met over Zoom to discuss some of Chesler’s ideas and the work that went into creatingConnection / Isolation.
When asked about inspiration for the documentary, G Chesler explained that around 2021, “I had been brewing a film on trans health, and I started on the process. Then I realized the things I really wanted to talk about were networks of care that were outside of institutions of health… I felt like the narrative around COVID wasn’t expressing what trans and queer people were uniquely experiencing and still experiencing in this ongoing pandemic. I started doing the research on and around that question.”
Connection / Isolation is a collection of eight portraits interwoven with short reenactments depicting very specific COVID moments, such as hand washing cloth masks, making sourdough bread from scratch, online communities, and scrolling. Each person speaks directly into the camera as they are interviewed, along with being filmed in other situations to round out their stories.
“We had an established aesthetic, which was that the interviews would be center-framed and people would be looking into the lens because I wanted [each interview] to look like a Zoom call. I really wanted to celebrate Zoom space because as a cognitively disabled person, that’s how I got back into the world,” points out the director. Indeed, the participants relaxed in this space, each one comfortable sharing their views on their specific experiences.
Feeling extremely at ease talking to G Chesler, it was not difficult imagining how the people who spoke on screen told their stories so serenely. “People really were genuine and open, and we had wonderful conversations. When people showed up, they had done some reflection on their own. What’s very vital to me when working with trans participants is that the film allows space for that, for people to really sit with their portrait and understand a public presentation of self in this moment that requires their consent.”
Such respect for the interviewees comes through in Chesler’s honesty and generosity. The documentary is informative and informal at the same time. This balance allows those interviewed to be even more accessible while they consider such vital matters as art, activism, loneliness, disability, dysphoria, transphobia, and community.
Chesler incorporates elements from their own life and journey, infusing the filmmaking process with curiosity and experience. “I am an anthropologist by training in my undergrad career. I approach documentary from that place, being really interested in culture.
I see a way of articulating trans culture through a variety of people and through a really diverse group of people in all of its complexity. There is something remarkable about the way that trans people experience life, our bodies, and community, that can reflect to [the trans community] in a way that could be affirming and an act of healing.”
While many may want to put the pandemic in the past, it seems necessary to continue examining its meaning and impact. Through the multitude of experiences we see in Connection I Isolation, one can do so. We hear of Asian-American discrimination, people with disabilities, long-COVID sufferers, and individuals trying to transition during the pandemic. The diversity that is given a voice through this film and its participants is essential, especially in the US under the Trump administration, which is quickly turning its back on people while denying them rights and protection.
Detroit artist Bakpak Durden states, “I watch how people operate in this post-pandemic time, and there’s an amnesia, a forgetting of what happened. In many ways, the pandemic gave rise to the things that people were asking for… Things are going back to how they were, which is in service to a system that doesn’t want us to have a voice.”
Durden’s large-scale murals tend to depict “subjects in transitional states with an emphasis on connecting to the surrounding communities.” They adorn numerous walls and spaces around Detroit and elsewhere. There is often a thread-like line of a contrasting color intersecting at sharp geometric angles. This line leads the eye in and around the composition, perhaps in and out of consciousness and spirituality, thus demanding our attention.
Throughout the documentary, connection and isolation persist on many levels. The importance of connection for people in the trans community and the infinite ways of doing so through art, activism, online, and in person, are emphasized along with the connection to history.
“There is no reason why we can’t have the future and the communities that we desire. We have everything we need at our disposal, we have our ancestors at our backs, we have so much knowledge and connection through the internet, we have all this amazing artwork and cultural historical grounding,” underlines Atlanta based Mickaela (Micky B.) Bradford who considers herself a “nerd for justice” and “uses film and performance to educate, agitate and organize communities.”
Isolation plays a constant role in the considerations made about the pandemic and the ongoing need to combat disconnection between people. Chesler states, “Isolation is the tool of fascism, which Hannah Arendt studied. If we keep people separated from one another, then our ability to defend ourselves against fascist governments is reduced.
COVID was the perfect storm. This pandemic has really helped enact what we’re living through right now. By making a film that would bring people together, I’m trying to do more than reflect something. I’m trying to fix something and heal something. At the same time, what isolation did for trans people was make it so our communities become much more intentional.”
Another crucial consideration made in Connection I Isolation is the importance of the disability perspective. Chesler features disability points of view through interviews with visual artist Kirin Queer Wave and activists/advocates JD Davids and Gabriel San Emeterio. G Chesler quotes JD Davids, “If we start from a place where those who have the least access guide our framework of care, then everyone will have care.”
Unfortunately this bottom up strategy seems vastly distant from where US policy is going. G Chesler continues, “If we use a disability first perspective, if we use the perspective of people who are houseless or have housing insecurity, if we work from the perspective and listen to the guidance of people who are trans, then these systems will be reimagined. Of course , that’s not what happened but when the pandemic started, people were listening to folks with disabilities. They were listening to trans women and trans femmes, who had the networks already to get people what they needed. Then everyone decided to change that. It was a decision.
That’s what’s so important to me about this film, in terms of marking a history and time, is to remember that these things were enacted. It was a decision to ignore the pandemic, and to continue to ignore it and to forget. It was an active decision.”
The re-enactments placed throughout the documentary serve to link the interviews, tying the film together visually as well. They allow for getting “archival material into the film without stopping” and “reflect the way that we’ve experienced the media in this time.” G Chesler was interested in reproducing “these very core memories like wiping down groceries, that all people of a certain class went through. It’s also a door for cis people to come in and see themselves.”
Furthermore, “Enactment is part of the language of our work because sometimes the history isn’t there. It’s not visible, but also the imagining, the reflection of intimacy needs to be recreated. With these reenactments, everyone is reliving a moment that they lived.” Indeed, the reenactment method is an accessible and familiar way to invite viewers to remember where they were during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, and recognize that they have also moved on to a certain extent.
Portland based cinematographer, Aubree Bernier-Clarke, filmed all of the enactments, making “the film feel cohesive visually and aesthetically.” In this way, Aubree “is basically the director of photography because of that. It brings you back to the aesthetic center of the film when you go into the reenactments, because we were filming all over the country. I hired at least seven different cinematographers for this film.”
G Chesler confirms that “100% of our crew members are queer and 80% of us are trans identified” and feels this “infuses the film with that lived experience.” To them, “it means when a person is an artist who is trans making the work, they are able to bring their full artistry to the meaning of the film, then format it without my direction making every decision.” This made for an inclusive and cooperative working environment that is reflected in the documentary itself.
When asked about the lack of a writing credit for the documentary, G Chesler was quick to respond about working with editor Eli Haan. “We could both be credited as writers of the film, but it’s really a lot of editing. The words are spoken by the participants.
The way that Eli and I work is I look at the transcripts, and I’ve worked in this way my entire career, then I build the edit from the transcript. I will really study what people are saying and remember them… I spend a lot of time thinking about the words and working with the paper transcript, which I would give to Eli. We went back and forth for almost two years moving things around.”
While G Chesler has made numerous shorts, fiction, and documentary films, it seems that their spirit lies in working with community, while understanding and reminding people that their lives matter. This comes through in their work as a filmmaker as well as a professor. G Chesler describes one of their film classes as “creating moments where my students can see a reflection of life’s value and purpose, reflect on their own value and purpose.”
As we speak on Zoom, it occurs to me that G Chesler could be on one of the documentary’s sets; a well-lit room with stocked bookshelves behind, a homey yet professional feel, seated behind a large yet unseen desk like some sort of Star Trek control panel. At one point, Chesler start ducking in and out of the frame. Wondering if they have to cut the call short, they reassured me, “No I was just looking for a book I want to recommend you.” There Chesler goes, connecting again.
Connection I Isolation ends with two friends meeting in a park for lunch with their COVID-19 masks on. They sit, they chat, and eventually, they unmask. While it seems like a potentially lighter and uplifting moment, G Chesler explains the added significance of including them.
JJ Jones’ and Úmi Vera’s “work is literally around immigration, that of securing the rights, protecting immigrants who are trans, visiting ICE facilities, fighting for their rights. I appreciate that the film concludes on their voices because of what we’re dealing with right now: the escalation of ICE and the increase in their work, unfortunately.” Connection I Isolation contains many thoughtful and thought-out scenes, which G Chesler acknowledges, “There are layers and layers of intentionality in the film.”
G Chesler works on multiple levels and works inclusively. Their work sensibility comes from a DIY ethic learned back in the 1990s in San Francisco. In another of G Chesler’s film classes, they incorporate hard lessons about the reality of distribution in the current market, something they continue to learn today while working to distribute Connection I Isolation.
“The film has been in some film festivals, plus I’ve had a real diversity of screenings, which are requests from the community… While there are traditional festival screenings, I’m transitioning into educational distribution of the film now. I believe that the fear and stigma [of trans people] has held the film back from being received. Yet in working with New Day Films and then the Kanopy streaming system the film will be available to everyone with a Public Library card that has Kanopy at their library.
So the film’s effect continues [long past the time of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown]. It will continue to be accessible for the duration, for as long as people want and need it.” There is also an episode format that will be available to educators so that they “could use a smaller element or single portrait for their work in the classroom.”
The voices speaking out in Connection I Isolation are relatable and informative. As G Chesler aptly says, “Isn’t it wonderful when you hear somebody say that thing you have been thinking and maybe you didn’t have the words for? That’s what a lot of the participants are giving to the viewers: clarity and the ability to reflect as people hear something similar [to their experience] or something they never really thought about.”
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