A cinematic essay set against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, The Royal Road offers up intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo alongside a primer on Junipero Serra's Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War. Featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner.
Co-presented by MIX NYC, producer of the NY Queer Experimental Film Festival.
The latest film from acclaimed San Francisco-based filmmaker, writer, curator, and LGBT film historian Jenni Olson, The Royal Road is a beautifully structured, multi-faceted essay film that offers up a primer on Junipero Serra’s Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity, the quest for unattainable women, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo – all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, and featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner. Freely mixing personal and historical meditations, and allowing the two to amplify each other without necessarily making the connections explicit, The Royal Road is a film of ideas that is also a pleasure to look at and listen to.
